


The Secret Language Brother

by Encairion



Series: The Revolutionary and the Usurper [2]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Incest, M/M, Sibling Incest, Underage character having sexual thoughts about another underage character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2018-12-06 05:24:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11593839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Encairion/pseuds/Encairion
Summary: His hands fell from Curufin’s face to rest against the base of Curufin’s throat, mouth parched and burning as a dessert around the confession.  Say it.Say it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this story originally as a one-shot, but then decided I wanted to flush it out more. So, this first chapter’s pace is more like a one-shot than the later ones. 
> 
> Chapter warning: underage character experiencing sexual thoughts about another underage character. Caranthir is 17, and Curufin is 14-15.

The Secret Language Brother  
Chapter 1  
  
Caranthir used to sneak into the nursery at night, creep to Curufin’s cradle, and pet Curufin’s tiny fingers until Curufin’s big eyes blinked open. Caranthir would tell Baby Curufin tales of the adventures he had planned for them. He made sure Baby Curufin knew he’d never tease him for being littler or leave him behind when Curufin couldn’t keep up. Caranthir would always wait, because they were going to be best friends and have their own language of secret signals like his older brothers’ did.  
  
Caranthir had decided Curufin would be his favorite brother. He was tired of having no one to play with. He wanted so badly to play big-boy games with Celegorm and Maglor, the ones even Maedhros joined in, but they were always pushing him away, telling him he was a baby. Maedhros never pushed him away, but Maedhros was too old to be a best friend. Celegorm and Maglor would use their secret-language of hands to signal each other at meal table, plotting how they’d give Caranthir the slip, and no matter how tight Caranthir stuck to their sides, they always found a way to sneak off and leave him.  
  
Caranthir had his own secret-language brother now. He grinned as he whispered to Baby Curufin about their coming, glorious friendship.   
  
They became friends as Caranthir knew they would be, best friends. They didn’t do everything together or have everything in common, but neither did his older brothers, so Caranthir supposed that was all right. They both liked books, though Curufin’s favorites were Father’s languages books and Caranthir’s were anything with numbers in them, and those puzzle ones Celegorm teased him for carrying around even to visit the horses (Celegorm’s favorite adventure; he couldn’t understand why anyone could possibly get bored with petting horses).   
  
When Curufin started begging Father to go to the forge with him a whole ten years before Maedhros had, everyone said Curufin would be a great smith. Caranthir spent days sulking over this development and snapping at anyone who came too near.   
  
All the brothers had learned their parents’ craft, but Caranthir had no true talent with either the chisel or hammer and didn’t want to lose Curufin to the forge. After a time of disappointment, he conceded smith-work made Curufin happy, and decided not to hold it against his best friend. They became inseparable again. Nothing could unstick Curufin from his side. It was Caranthir and Curufin against the world.  
  
The day came when everything fell apart. They’d been stuck in Tirion until the twins grew strong enough to survive life in the wilderness, but now Father had taken them into the wilds, the Southern jungles this time.   
  
They’d packed light. Curufin and Caranthir had to leave some favorite books on the shelves, Maglor hadn’t been able to lug his great bear-skin drum along, Celegorm had to set the fox cubs he’d been raising under his bed free, and Maedhros couldn’t bring those stuffy tomes he’d been studying about Quendi family structures before the Great Journey.  
  
Curufin and Caranthir had never been South, so it was a grand adventure the further from civilization they drew. The day everything unraveled, they had prepared to slip off into the brush together, sickles in hand to hack a path. But they knew better than to try and sneak-off without alerting their mother to their plans.  
  
Curufin rounded up water-skins while Caranthir slipped down the line of the caravan to Mother’s horse. She walked beside the big grey mare with the twins perched on its back, double heads of red swaying in perfect sync. Sometimes the twins were a bit scary with how perfectly attuned they were to each other.   
  
Caranthir hadn’t bothered listening to the fables about twins until his brothers were born. By now he was sick to death of hearing both the superstitions against them and those who looked at the twins with something akin to worship. Twins were said to be one _fëa_ split in two bodies; two halves of a whole.   
  
“Mother.” His mother turned from readjusting Amras’ leg in the stirrup as he kept wiggling his foot out, wanting the freedom of careless leg-swinging. “Curufin and I are going exploring.” He kept it simple, to the point.   
  
It was Maglor and Maedhros who played word-games with Father, dancing around with their words and getting disgustingly excited when a particularly refined answer was crafted. Caranthir jumped at the chance to solve a problem of logic, or better yet one of measurement or number play his father cooked up from him, but left the fancy word-games to his elder brothers.  
  
“Be back with the caravan before dark, and don’t stray outside calling range.” She gave the instruction with only half her attention to spare as Amras tried to be sneakier about getting his foot free.   
  
Caranthir wasn’t of a mind to argue for more freedom. The caravan made such a commotion with all the hacking the Elves made through the tangle of jungle it wouldn’t be hard to keep within Mother’s perimeters.  
  
“I said no, Amras!”  
  
Mother’s sharp reprimand had Amras ducking his head, foot meekly finding its place again. Amrod’s little arms slipped about his brother’s waist, and Amras leaned against his twin’s side, mouth a downturned crescent and slender brows pinched. Amras was both more prone to mischief than Amrod, as well as more likely to take a sharp word to heart.   
  
Mother sighed, tucking strands of hair escaping her bun back behind her ears. She raised a hand to her brow, shading her eyes as she stretched her sight over the approaching cliffs to the east. “If you see any sign of you father, tell him I don’t wish to travel as far as we did yesterday. The young ones were exhausted, and Meril is still recovering from that spider bite.”  
  
Caranthir didn’t bother answering. If he did see his father, he would make sure to say nothing. It was better to let Mother and Father work out their disputes themselves and stay far away when the shouting started. Mother’s request may have seemed innocent, but her voice when she said ‘your father’ had not been. Nothing was innocent anymore.  
  
Caranthir scuttled away. He spotted Curufin loitering in the front of the caravan where Maedhros and Maglor chopped a path with the hardiest of Father’s people. Maedhros had taken his tunic off in the heat, and his freckled shoulders rippled as he sliced his sickle through the undergrowth. Sweat dripped down his brow, but he smiled and laughed as he chatted with one of the stonemason’s sons.   
  
Caranthir caught more than one glance cast Maedhros’ way, some sly, others not able to stop from staring. It wasn’t just that Maedhros was very fine to look at; it was his easiness of manner, the natural charm with which he ensnared love and admiration with a single dazzling smile and genuinely kind word.  
  
Maglor had on a sleeveless tunic and didn’t throw himself into the work as enthusiastically as their elder brother. But Maglor held his own in the line of bushwhackers even without the broadness of shoulder many of the others possessed. What Maglor lacked in physical strength next to these primmest of males, he made up for in company. His voice led the others in one of the traditional Songs of Toil, flowing clear and pure as a mountain brook.  
  
Caranthir slipped through the workers, reaching Malgor’s side as the song swelled like a fruit ripening under golden light. Curufin was already there, water-skins slung over his shoulder, caught up in a conversation with one of the bronze smiths. Caranthir caught Curufin’s eye, and jerked his head towards the forest, wishing to be away. Curufin waved him off, ensnared as always in any discussion hinting at further knowledge to glean.  
  
Caranthir sliced his sickle through some low laying brush, glaring at anyone, everyone. Maglor flipped Caranthir a look, pausing to slip his sickle into his belt and take up a water-skin. “Have you seen Father since breakfast?”  
  
Caranthir shrugged.  
  
“Maedhros said he was going scouting. I wish he had told Maedhros the intended route. Those cliffs look like they will herd us too far west, but then, Father might want to explore them. He found diamonds in a stream last night. Did you hear?”  
  
Caranthir grunted. He might have.  
  
“But then, asking Father to remember such a little thing as leaving directing is too much to ask, eh?” Maglor tried to share a dimpled smile with him, but Caranthir wasn’t in the mood.   
  
Maglor shrugged at his grumpiness, and lifted the water-skin to his lips. After taking a gulp, he squeezed his eyes shut and poured some of the water into his face. “Ah, that is better,” he combed wet hair back from his forehead.  
  
Caranthir hacked beside Maglor for a time, fueling his impatience into the work. Maglor picked up a song again, but the Elves didn’t jump in this time, content to listen to his peerless voice. Caranthir was thankful for the excuse not to be pressed into conversation with the other Elves. His father’s people were the best of the best, nothing like the simpletons in Tirion, but even their conversation wore on his nerves after a time.   
  
Eventually Curufin pulled himself away and came to walk alongside Caranthir. Caranthir forgave Curufin the brush-off the minute his brother smiled at him.   
  
Curufin slipped an arm through his. “Ready?”  
  
Caranthir’s mouth twitched. He rested the curved blade of his sickle against his shoulder, and followed Curufin into the untamed jungle. His mood had improved enough to smile at Maglor and Maedhros when they called out a farewell.  
  
Tomorrow Caranthir would take his turn helping Mother with the twins, scouting ahead with Father, or working up a sweat with the trail-blazers, but today was Curufin and his to explore and he was jealous for it. Even with the lessons at home, they still had more time to simply enjoy each other’s company there than on their travels. But hectic as tent life on the edges of the world was, he wouldn’t trade these days for all any lazy afternoon spent in one of Tirion’s posh gardens.  
  
They soon discovered where Celegorm had disappeared to. They found him talking to a den of snakes with skins brilliant as jewels. His lips rounded with the strange language Oromë had taught him. He had his puppy at his side, hand idly scratching behind Huan’s ears as he knelt in the think blanket of decomposing leaves.   
  
Celegorm looked up at their coming, teeth flashing white and eager. His eyes looked even greener in this forest of green.   
  
Celegorm displayed the snakling wrapped about his wrist gleefully. “This little one has agreed to return with me. I am going to slip her beneath Mother and Father’s bedroll tonight. Amras will love it.”   
  
Celegorm was forever getting himself into mischief, but always wiggling out again by the power of his pretty eyes and the dimpled, boyish grins he’d been blessed with. Standing side-by-side when those dimples flashed, it was easy to look passed Maglor’s black hair and Celegorm’s fair and note all the lines in their faces that shouted their brotherhood.  
  
As a young man freshly passed his majority, Celegorm was far too old for such childish pranks, but he’d taken them up again with all the relish of an elder brother showing off his tricks for a younger because it made the twins’ laugh. There was too little laughter in their family these days. Sometimes one of Celegorm’s ridiculous shenanigans was all that tugged a smile to Amrod’s quiet mouth.   
  
Curufin and Caranthir were too wise to get tangled up in the prank’s backlash. The cost of a moment’s laughter would all too easily be another round of their parents’ raised voices.   
  
Father would share in the amusement as long as the snake didn’t interrupt a train of inventive thought. Mother used to laugh a great belly-shaking laugh in their youth when Celegorm came home trailing field mice and hiding toads in his pockets. Now she had only a tongue-lashing to reward Celegorm’s efforts with. She was too tired these days to sink her fingers into clay or pick up a chisel. Caranthir wondered sometimes if she would mourn his absence as fiercely as she grieved for the loss of her work.   
  
Curufin and Caranthir left Celegorm to his snake charming. They’d spent years in the Northern wildernesses, but this Southern one of towering trees, rain and more rain, huge bugs, and jewel-colored birds and flowers was like walking the surface of an alien world. They broke through a particularly dense patch of underbrush to reach the waterfall they’d heard crashing beyond.   
  
The sight sucked the air up from their lungs like a sweet kiss. The water fell in a sheet so sheer they could look through it like a shaft of light. Without the huge-leaved trees concealing the Tree Light, it rained gold on the green, green _everything_. Even the rocks were green, covered in a moss thick enough to serve as a carpet. Curufin turned to him with a grin Caranthir returned, and they started tearing off their clothes in a race to see who could reach the water first.   
  
Caranthir’s feet got tangled in his leggings, so Curufin beat him, jumping into the pool with a whoop, limbs spinning wildly as he soared through the air. Caranthir followed a moment later, skimming a jagged rock by inches to break the pool’s surface with a splash. He found Curufin’s leg in the water and yanked. His brother’s retaliatory kick hit him in the gut, and he had to paddle to the surface for air.  
  
They spent hours leaping off the highest rocks, swinging on the abnormally strong vines, and playing dunking games. The caravan had long passed, but they told each other it would be easy enough to follow the trail it blazed through the forest. They were reluctant to draw such a perfect afternoon to a close.   
  
They stretched out on slabs of mossy rock and let the heat dry their skin. Their bellies pressed into the yielding moss, their heads pillowed in their crossed arms, and faces turned to each other.   
  
While they may not have everything in common, Caranthir could listen to his brother speak for hours. Curufin was like Father. His eyes would glow with excitement, movements intensifying in animation the longer he talked and the deeper he sunk into the wonder of which he spoke.   
  
Caranthir propped his chin on his cupped palm, a little smile on his face as he watched Curufin rise to his elbows in the passion of his speech. Caranthir hadn’t stuck with the art of forging long enough to have a basis for the advanced technique Curufin attempted to share the wonder of, but he liked watching Curufin like this, liked having those intense eyes turned on him when they shone star-bright, and liked the way those cheeks pinked, delicate as the blush of sea-shells, the color splashing the sharp arc of cheekbones.   
  
He watched Curufin: looking at those pale hands punctuating words, and traced the curl of lashes thick as black lace. He wanted to reach over and run his fingers though Curufin’s drying hair that looked silken as the strands of one of Maglor’s songs.   
  
Water droplets slid the curve of Curufin’s spine to pool in the dip just before the swell of his ass. Muscles were forming under Curufin’s skin, the child’s body left behind for a youth’s, and Caranthir wondered what they would feel like shifting beneath his fingers, his lips—  
  
He snapped the thought off. He felt lightheaded, sick. Curufin was his brother. How could he think…how could he want— what was _wrong_ with him?  
  
Curufin’s face titled close, mouth shaping strings of perfect syllables as he articulated his points as neatly as Maedhros. Curufin, his clever, crafty, brilliant brother. His best friend. His beautiful brother who he _wanted_ —   
  
“Is something wrong?” Those innocent, oblivious eyes looked up at him with absolute trust.  
  
“Nothing,” Caranthir climbed to his feet, suddenly ashamed of his nakedness. “I think we should get back, that’s all. They’ll be setting up camp soon, and we’ll have to help with the tent raising.”  
  
Curufin sighed, rolling over and arching his back in a stretch. Caranthir’s mouth went dry, and he quickly turned away to grab his clothing, hastening into his leggings before Curufin could witness his inappropriate reaction to his brother’s naked body.  
  
He tried to keep his eyes averted as Curufin dressed, but they kept slipping over, watching those coltish legs stick themselves into leggings that clung from the moisture lingering on his skin. He bit his lip when Curufin bent over to retrieve his boots before he’d pulled on his tunic.  
  
Curufin stood back up with a toss of his glossy hair from his eyes. “Maglor promised to sing for us tonight, that new one he has been working on for ages and has been so secretive about.”   
  
Caranthir could choke out no more than a grunt.   
  
Curufin perched himself on a rock and started stuffing his feet into his boots. “I thought it was about a girl, but I suppose not if he is going to sing it for Mother and Father. I still think he is mooning over someone. He kept mysteriously disappearing at home.”  
  
Caranthir hummed. There was too much pounding in his head to concentrate on Curufin’s words. He wanted to yank the tunic out of Curufin’s hands and replace the water on his skin with his lips.   
  
How long had this sickness been hiding inside him? How many stray thoughts had he brushed aside that were the first warning tolls? Had he been born crooked? Was this the root of all the flaws in his character others (but never his family) pointed out?   
  
( _Must you be so argumentative, Caranthir? Control yourself for once! You’re glaring again. Don’t be ridiculous, of course you can help it, nobody’s face is ‘just made that way.’ Did you hit your cousin? It doesn’t count as an apology if you insult them during the giving!_ )  
  
“I think it is a Vanya,” Curufin scowled, tying up the lacing on his tunic. “I saw him taking the road to the Mountain once. A Vanya, yuck!” Curufin made a face, expecting Caranthir to return it, but Caranthir couldn’t get his facial muscles to work properly. Curufin frowned. “I suppose it is not _that_ awful. I mean, it is not like he would actually marry one.”  
  
“We should get going.” Caranthir turned away, striding for the path they’d forged.  
  
“Caranthir!” Curufin hurried after him, but Caranthir was the elder and the taller. He out-distanced Curufin easily until his brother broke into a run to catch him, and then he didn’t have an excuse for actually running away.  
  
Curufin grabbed his arm, and Caranthir flinched at the contact, trying desperately not to look down at that flushed face, lips parted for breath, eyes distressed.   
  
“Something is wrong. Tell me!”  
  
Caranthir brushed the hand off, and hated himself all the more for the hurt he planted in those beloved eyes. This was his best friend, there were no secrets between them, or there hadn’t been. Caranthir’s black moods had never lasted long when Curufin sat down beside him and bumped their shoulders together. They shattered with a single smile from Curufin’s mouth.  
  
“Come on,” Curufin rallied. “Stop being a bear and tell me.” He smiled, tentativeness hiding in the folds as Caranthir glared back, burying his terror in a harsh brow and compressed mouth.   
  
He hadn’t been lying when he told that dullard he couldn’t help his frowning face. It really was the way his face was made. His brows were too heavy, mouth too thin, nose too sharp, cheeks too freckled. He looked odd for an Elf, but it wasn’t the lack of beauty that bothered him about his features, it was that everyone kept accusing him of being angry even when he wasn’t! He was angry often enough to know the feeling of a clenching belly and words pressing so hot against his tongue he just had to release them. He resented being accused of emotions he wasn’t feeling. No one but his family ever believed him when he said he wasn’t angry (as if he didn’t know his own mind!), and others’ patronizing words inevitably awoke the very emotion they’d been accusing him of in the first place!  
  
Now he turned the full power of his glare on a person he’d never, never, been angry with. Curufin’s smile faltered. “Caranthir?”  
  
“You’re so pathetic sometimes! I don’t want to babysit an annoying child like you every moment! Why can’t you just _leave me alone_!” He shoved Curufin with his body as he lurched into motion, needing to get away. He heard Curufin cry out as his lighter frame crashed into the ground.   
  
The universe upheaved inside his head, its backbone splitting open, pulling its guts up with it. He wanted to scream. He wanted to hurt something. He wanted to run back, pick Curufin up, and make him understand how sorry he was. But he wanted to press his mouth into Curufin’s too, wanted to learn what his brother’s body would feel like under his, so he didn’t stop running.  
  
He reached the cluster of tents, but slunk in the tree shadows, not venturing within the light of campfires without his brother with him. The light had long turned silver before Curufin arrived, and Caranthir’s stomach had been cramping for what felt like eternity, eyes raking the darkness for a sign of his brother, fretting over going back to look for him and trying to convince himself Curufin would be fine.  
  
When Curufin finally emerged from the caravan’s beaten path, Caranthir sprang up from his seat on a fallen log. Curufin’s gaze found him in an instant. A war took place there, but desire for his best friend back had Curufin walking towards him.   
  
He wasn’t smiling, but Caranthir knew all he had to do was apologize and Curufin would forgive him. Things could go back to the way they had been. Only they couldn’t, never again, because when Curufin walked through a beam of silver light he looked more beautiful than a Vala to Caranthir. He wanted, he wanted—  
  
He turned his back on Curufin and slapped a tree branch away, marching towards camp. He heard a sucked breath, the sound edging towards wetness. And then Curufin said, _Brother_. It nearly broke him, nearly pulled him back, nearly unwound his steps until he had Curufin in his arms, soothing away all the hurts. That was what big brothers did. And that was what kept him walking away because Curufin was his _brother_ , his baby brother, and what he wanted to do to him wasn’t anything brotherly.  
  
Curufin didn’t find consolation in Celegorm’s company that first night, or for many nights after. He hadn’t learned to bury his heart and strike back when it hurt. He wasn’t yet a creature of revenge and sharp edges. He was still the bright-eyed youth who didn’t understand what he’d done wrong, and so was determined to make Caranthir love him again. But Caranthir never stopped loving him. He loved him too much.   
  
Curufin was eager to be found worthy of love, even back then, and experience hadn’t taught him yet to secret that eagerness away. Caranthir pushed Curufin away again and again, hurting him with words to keep him from getting too close. His cruelty pushed Curufin right into Celegorm’s arms. Caranthir was the first to teach Curufin the pain of abandonment and sowed the first seed of the thorn-tree Curufin became.  
  
Caranthir wanted to hate Celegorm when he saw the two of them together, side-by-side like Curufin and him used to be, but Celegorm was impossible to hate. There had been questions and concerned interventions from Father and Mother and all his elder brothers, but he would not speak of what caused him to drive Curufin away. All their questions hadn’t crept close to the truth, why would they? What he desired was sick and not something normal minds would consider.  
  
A part of him desperately wished his walls would be knocked down and he could collapse into Mother or Father’s laps, vomiting his vileness all over them so they would fix it like he used to believe they could fix anything. But his world fell apart scant weeks before their family did. Already the fights were a near nightly occurrence, and Mother left them there in the wild lands of the South. Her abandonment shattered everything.   
  
The shock of Mother’s voice as she screamed, ‘I’m done with you!’ at Father, the furious tears on her cheeks she scrubbed away as she kissed her boys goodbye and they watched her ride away and leave them, not even Maedhros’ pleas able to sway her, left Caranthir and Curufin’s ruptured relationship a shelved matter, something to be unknotted at a later time when the stress fractures stopped creeping through every facet of their lives.   
  
Or that was what Caranthir thought, and both wanted and cried himself to sleep over. But Father wouldn’t let him push him away. He pursued Caranthir until Caranthir broke and spilled everything, and it felt so _good_. Father wiped the tears from his cheeks, kissed his brow, and told him he was loved. Father gave him the courage to re-build his friendship with Curufin. It wasn’t the same, he’d wounded Curufin too deeply for trust, but for a time it was enough.   
  
And then it wasn’t, because a part of Caranthir had hoped, secretly, that when Curufin was older they might…that Curufin would look at him and see…but Curufin brought a girl home and told them he was going to marry her. It was never going to be all right again. Caranthir ruined what little friendship Curufin and he had left.  
  
The years passed, and it became as common to see Celegorm and Curufin together as it once had been to see the two of them. Caranthir wondered if Curufin forgot the friendship they once shared. He never could.   
  
Their friendship was wrecked (by his own hand), but he couldn’t destroy his desires so irreversibly. They followed him into the night, into every moment his eyes spent lingering a little too long on Curufin’s face. And they poisoned _everything_. They made him do things, say things, he couldn’t seem to stop himself from.   
  
He was vicious, lashing out at Curufin, punishing him for not loving him back. Even though he knew Curufin couldn’t force his heart, still he cried out for its return. Curufin threw nasty words back, but not one of them hurt like Curufin’s arm about his wife’s waist or his head bent close to Celegorm in a secret language that Caranthir was barred from, nothing but an outsider looking in.  
  
  



	2. Chapter 2

The Secret Language Brother  
Chapter 2  
  
Curufin glowed, cheeks flushed and eyes bright with anticipation. If Caranthir pressed his palm into the narrow strip between his little brother’s shoulder blades, he thought he’d be able to feel Curufin’s bones vibrating.  
  
Curufin cradled his hand-fins to his chest. The scarlet of the scales he’d painted on the ash-wood shone bright as coral in Laurelin’s mid-day light. Caranthir’s own fins did not share the touch of a true artist as Curufin’s did.  
  
Caranthir had painted them, unwilling to be left out of a single step of Curufin’s experiment, even if the step was a beautifying one only Father and Curufin understood the vital importance of. The result of his plunge into artistry was a solid dark blue that hid all the mistakes underneath. Curufin had offered to paint his fins and give them the realistic shine of his own, but Caranthir refused, unconcerned over his fins’ appearance. He had joined in on Curufin’s experiment, as he had on all the ones before, more out of a desire to be with Curufin than to test whether he could out-swim a fish.  
  
They broke through the last cover of trees. The pond’s water glimmered clear and inviting before them. Curufin smiled at him, and Caranthir smiled back, chest warming to share this moment with his favorite person in the world.  
  
Father’s long strides reached the pond’s edge before them. He’d carried Curufin’s feet-fins from the house as Curufin’s smaller arms were unable to take the full load. He settled them into the grass now, and put his hands on his hips, surveying the water.  
  
Father looked down on them with approval as Caranthir and Curufin joined him, Curufin running the last few yards to pull up close and excited at Father’s side. Father dropped a hand into Curufin’s sleek, dark hair. His head tilted down to catch Curufin’s eyes, and light flashed in his crystal earrings. “Get yourselves ready.”  
  
Curufin hurried to be the first to obey. Father set up the hourglass with its smaller measuring device that tracked to the minute as Curufin dropped his red-leather journal in the grass along with his fins. It was his special book, packed full of theories and the results of this experiment and that. This new experiment would be inked in beside all the rest.  
  
Curufin stripped off his clothing like a race, flinging tunic, leggings, and sandals aside to snatch up his fins and dash to the bank and plunge his feet in up to the calf. Father laughed, the sound deep and warm as his hugs, and joined Curufin at the water’s edge. He settled down into the grass to help Curufin slip the handsome wooden fins over his feet and strap them on. Curufin’s voice built with enthusiasm as he began running over all his theories again with Father. Father listened to them all as if for the first time.  
  
Caranthir stripped off his own clothes as Father challenged Curufin’s mind afresh, poising questions that had Curufin diving back for his journal to flip through and consult his calculations against. Every time Father smiled with pride when Curufin said something particularly clever for an eight-year-old, Curufin’s face lit up like a star. Caranthir loved these moments best because Curufin never failed to seek his eyes out to share in his wild delight at Father’s approval, Caranthir’s company, and the thrill of a discovery unfolding around them.  
  
Arms slipped about Caranthir’s middle from behind, and a swath of creamy hair tumbled over his shoulder in loose waves spun like pale gold and silver. Celegorm had wandered back to them from his momentary enthrallment with the forest. Some woodland creature had enchanted him on the way from the house and pulled him deep into a green embrace.  
  
“Caranthir, be a good little brother, and let me have a turn with your fish-fins?”  
  
Caranthir hesitated. Celegorm had made no fins of his own, though all their brothers had known of Curufin’s experiment for days as it was all Curufin talked of. Celegorm, in his usual way, had not grown interested until the excitement began and tagged along as they set out from the house.  
  
“Come on, Caranthir, I really want a turn.” Then, voice dropping soft and sweet in Caranthir’s ear, “You’re my nicest brother.”  
  
Caranthir squirmed in his brother’s arms, heart torn. Celegorm’s attention transformed Caranthir into someone special and mature, worth the notice of his adored older brothers.  
  
When Curufin was still growing in their mother’s belly, Caranthir’s desperation to be included in his older brothers’ adventures had driven him to stow himself away in Celegorm’s pony’s saddlebag when Maedhros and Maglor had taken Celegorm out riding with them. Caranthir had nearly had his head bashed in when his brothers made camp and Celegorm dropped his unexpectedly heavy saddlebag like a sack of potatoes in the dirt. Caranthir had fallen asleep that night curled into Celegorm’s side, his brothers having showered him with worried attention and delight at his bravery as they stuffed his cheeks with dinner and hugged him close. He drifted off blissfully in his big brothers’ arms that wrapped about him gentle and safe as a caterpillar’s cocoon, and wished it could be like this always.  
  
But his longing to swim with Curufin and share this moment of his little brother’s triumph outweighed his pleasure at Celegorm’s attention. He twisted in Celegorm’s arms until his brother’s wiry limbs loosened. He told Celegorm seriously, meeting his eyes, “I want to swim with Curufin. But you can have a turn after.”  
  
Celegorm accepted the wait with a flash of tooth, and danced his fingers into Caranthir’s side until he yanked a laugh from him. “Sounds perfect to me,” he said, releasing Caranthir. “You saved me from being roped into Curufin’s newest project. I just want to see if I can catch fish with my teeth!”  
  
Celegorm darted away, shedding his clothes to strut about naked and comfortable in his natural skin as a lion in its fur. The white gem hung from a thin silver chain about his neck and laying like a kiss of light upon his breastbone, and the string of pearls about his ankle that rounded milky and luscious in the light, were the only adornments against his skin.  
  
Caranthir pushed aside his disappointment that Celegorm’s attention had been stolen away. He watched Celegorm nose about in the smooth stones of the pond’s bed, before Curufin darted over and snatched up his hand, chasing away all the longing and filling it with completion.  
  
Curufin tugged him over to Father. The fins already strapped to his feet, slapped against the grass as he walked. His hand was warm and small in Caranthir’s as his voice pitched high and excited.  
  
Caranthir watched close as Father’s dexterous hands helped him strap the fins on. Caranthir dunked his feet in the water beside Curufin, fluttering the fins lightly to get a feel for it. The wooden fins were light and flashed their brightness up at him through the clear water, but he could feel the way his muscles had to work a little harder to scoop the added weight of water.  
  
“Hurry!” Curufin flapped his hands at Caranthir, fingers already sheathed in scarlet-scaled fins that resembled a frog’s hands more than a fish’s tail.  
  
“Give you brother a moment to set himself in order, Curufin,” Father’s chide was gentle and delivered with a smile at the light of impatient discovery in Curufin’s eyes. “You would not want to leave him behind.”  
  
“Never!” Curufin said like he’d fight anyone who tried to make him. Caranthir’s heart lit up, and he smiled up at his brother who stood there small but fierce and determined and brilliant as a pillar of flame. Nothing could ever separate them.  
  
Father helped Caranthir slip on his hand fins, and then Caranthir wadded out to join Curufin in the pond’s shallow water. The stones were smooth and cool against the heels of his feet. The fins added resistance as he dragged each foot forward in what would have been an easy cut through the water without them.  
  
His predictions were propped up with this evidence. It was a simple experiment in truth. Their mass had not shifted, only the diameter of their paddles which affected their force of momentum through the water. Thus the acceleration they could achieve would rise proportionately to the force the fins propelled their mass through the water with.  
  
He had the theory, but needed the numbers. The experiment would give him that, filling into the hole of how much faster the fins accelerated them. From there he could calculate the extra force the fins had added atop his natural acceleration.  
  
He looked down and saw their two sets of fish-finned feet standing side-by-side in the water. Curufin and Father discussed a trial run before tested the fins’ speed in earnest. Caranthir watched the way the golden light seemed to pool on the pond’s surface, sparkling off the gentle, rippling waves the breeze played over it. He thought about the way light filtered through the water’s layers, looked at from below, the way it bent, and Father’s voice explaining the whys of it.  
  
In an awkward hold with their fins covering the backs of their hands, Curufin tangled their fingers together. The touch drew Caranthir’s eyes to his brother’s eager, flushed face.  
  
“Ready?” Curufin asked breathlessly.  
  
Caranthir squeezed Curufin’s fingers, mouth crooking up in a smile that never failed to earn him one in return. Still holding his brother’s hand, Caranthir pulled them deeper. When the water rose to their hips, he tugged Curufin down with him. The water closed in over their head in a pleasingly cool contrast to the heat of Laurelin’s light on their skin.  
  
Caranthir opened his eyes underwater. The depths of shifting blues with a tint of green met him. The pond escaped the murk of agley and heavy sediments, birthed as it was from an underground spring with generous tributaries to siphon its excess off and keep its waters flowing.  
  
He looked over at a tug on his hand and found Curufin pointing with one fin towards the deeper waters ahead. Curufin’s hair floated about his head and shoulders like black ribbons or sea-snakes, and the light in his eyes eclipsed that which filtered in through the surface of the pond.  
  
Caranthir pushed off, pulling Curufin behind him, testing out the power of his fins, and delighting in the way the stones and shifting sands of the pond’s bottom fell away behind him.  
  
Curufin’s hand slipped out of his, and before he could turn to search for his brother, Curufin wrapped his arms about Caranthir’s knees and dragged him down, impending his momentum. Caranthir caught a glimpse of his brother’s flashing, white grin, before Curufin spend into the lead.  
  
They played, racing each other, attempting summersaults with the fins, pretending to be fish and then dolphins in the deep waters, breaking the surface in perfect arcs of their backs. Always Curufin’s eyes shone, teasing him, daring him, challenging him to more and more, while that star-white smile flashed back at him. There was no one’s company he loved so well as Curufin’s. Never for a moment did he grow weary of it.  
  
They returned to the shore and began their experiment in earnest. Father timed them as they swam a distance with the fins, then without, then under the surface holding their breaths. All their times were neatly columned up to be compared and calculated in the experiment’s final steps.  
  
They wadded back to Father. Celegorm had stretched out on his belly in the grass beside him, half his attention lost to the tinny ball of fur he cupped in his hands, a baby coon he’d lured out of its den with his sweet-talking ways.  
  
Curufin could not wait until they reached dry ground before talking excitedly about their findings. Father and Curufin fell into each other’s minds, Curufin soaking up Father’s every word, eyes looking up at their father perched above them on the grass of the bank as if Father’s every word was life itself. Father’s own excitement built off Curufin’s. Their minds were like tinder for the other’s fire. Father did not need Curufin to understand the breadth and depth of his knowledge –Curufin would in time—what lit Father up was the way Curufin thrived on this, like the very breath in his lungs, his body vibrating and hands dancing just like Father’s did.  
  
When they reached the bank, Father picked Curufin up, using the cups of Curufin’s underarms, and hauled him dripping and naked from the pond. Curufin laughed, face bright with delight, and bubbled with passionate words tripping over themselves to leap out. He came to rest kneeling in the grass before Father’s crossed-legs. Father toweled Curufin off like a toddler, their conversation not stalling even as he teased Curufin by ruffling the towel through his hair.  
  
Caranthir smiled to see his brother so happy, so flushed in pride and blooming under Father’s attentions. His eyes were drawn away from the sight of Curufin’s happiness when Celegorm crawled over and began helping him tug the fins off faster. Caranthir felt a little guilty at how long he’d made Celegorm wait for a turn, but there was no sulk between Celegorm’s brows, only an eager grin. Celegorm carried his prize off, dashing away, naked skin glowing, and hair a swish of brilliance behind him.  
  
Father’s eyes turned to Caranthir then. His arm swept out to capture him and pull him against his side, unmindful of the wetness of Caranthir’s skin soaking into his tunic. “And what of your findings, Caranthir? Has your hypothesis been shaken by the trial or solidified?”  
  
Curufin’s gaze was riveted on him as well, both of them hanging on the moment, fairly bursting with the excitement of it all. Warmth settled deep in his core. He smiled, and joined them in their detailed analysis of every step of the experiment, laughing when Curufin threw out wild theories that bordered on speculation, his tender years showing but his pure delight in the process of discovery a beauty fit to be bottled and stored up like a treasure.  
  
When Father praised one of Caranthir’s ideas, Caranthir swelled up like a sail in the wind, and Curufin’s fingers finding his filled him with peace. The love he shared with Curufin was special, never doubted, never not enough, never something to be earned. It simply was and would always be, like the light of the Flame Imperishable that had no beginning and no end.  
  
Something snagged Father’s gaze from over Caranthir’s shoulder. Father’s eyes widened, and as Caranthir spun around Father’s voice rang in his ears: “Celegorm, no!”  
  
But Celegorm had already launched himself off a tree branch hanging out over the pond. His body arched in an elegant dive, the fins lending his silhouette an odd shape. His hands broke the surface first, head tucked between his clasped arms. The water swallowed the length of his legs and finally the pale flash of his narrow, gracefully feet that always made Caranthir think of dancers.  
  
By the time the last of his body disappeared below the surface, Father had launched himself into the air, sandals flipped off. He sliced through the water in a shallow dive. When he broke the surface, he’d already covered half the distance to Celegorm, and his swift, powerful strokes ate up what remained, churning the water white behind his feet.  
  
Caranthir hadn’t noticed when Curufin grabbed his hand, but they hung onto each other, squeezing bones like they dangled from a cliff face. Celegorm had regained the surface, but something was wrong. He did not struggle in the water or cry out –he was too skilled a swimmer for that—but he floated on his back, one arm hanging very still at his side as he kicked towards Father. Whatever was wrong, Father would fix it.  
  
Father reached Celegorm and tread water beside him a moment, hands running over Celegorm’s lax arm as Celegorm said something, the distance too great for the words to carry back to shore. Then Father ducked under Celegorm and pulled Celegorm’s back against his chest, one arm wrapped securely about Celegorm’s torso, and began the long haul back to shore.  
  
Caranthir and Curufin jumped in to help Father pull Celegorm to safety. Celegorm smiled at them as they swam up to his side, but the expression carried strain. When they reached the shallows, Father picked Celegorm up like a babe in his arms, taking care with Celegorm’s injured side, and carried Celegorm to the bank. He lay Celegorm down in the soft grass as Caranthir and Curufin crowed close.  
  
When Caranthir took his hand, Celegorm laughed, the sound struggling for a merriness it could not reach. But though Celegorm tried to put a brave face on it, his fingers closed tied about Caranthir’s, squeezing him back. He did not cry though. Caranthir had never seen his strong brother cry.  
  
Caranthir remembered when Celegorm used to sleep with a snake in his bed, a poisonous one with a killing bite. Caranthir would sneak into his brother’s room and find it curled about Celegorm’s waist. Celegorm would pet the soft scales of its head, hissings to it as it turned its yellow eyes on Caranthir, and invite Caranthir to touch it, saying it had promised not to bite. Caranthir had thought Celegorm wonderfully brave. He still did.  
  
“It is all right,” Celegorm said, smiling through gritted teeth, but smiling on and reassuring his wide-eyed younger brothers. Curufin’s lip trembled. “It is just my shoulder.”  
  
Caranthir bit his tongue against the tightness in his belly. “What happened?”  
  
Father had climbed out of the water and stripped off his soaking tunic and undershirt. The harsh sound of ripping fabric as Father torn his undershirt into strips made Curufin jump, eyes releasing their transfixed stare at the pointy bone riding just under the skin of Celegorm’s right shoulder.  
  
“I was being stupid. Didn’t think.” Celegorm reached for a laugh, but it shook in his chest. Caranthir held his brother’s hand tighter, and Celegorm’s mouth lifted in a faint smile for him. “It was the fins. The water just...grabbed them. You know how when riding in the forest you have to keep your arms close so tree branches don’t snag them? It was like that when I hit the water.”  
  
Father gently moved Curufin aside and knelt in the grass beside Celegorm. His eyes ran over Celegorm’s shoulder and arm, as serious in their observation as they were when gauging the quality of a forgoing. He rested his hand tenderly on Celegorm’s chest. It rose and fell under the hand a little too swiftly to fool any of them into believing Celegorm wasn’t in pain. “I am going to wrap your shoulder now. We will go up to the house and I will set it. I do not believe you torn anything, so have courage, the pain will be over soon.”  
  
Celegorm took a deep breath, nodding. Father touched Celegorm’s cheek, just there where his dimples bloomed, and gave Celegorm a soft smile. “Focus on your brothers and it will be over in a moment.”  
  
Celegorm’s eyes, the green deepened by pain, found Caranthir’s as Father carefully lifted him up to rest against his chest as he began to wrap Celegorm’s arm tight against his side. Celegorm’s cheeks resembled bleached bones and tight lines pressed into the skin about his mouth, but his eyes stayed dry and fixed on Caranthir’s.  
  
When Father tied the last of the wrapping off and asked Curufin to fetch Celegorm’s leggings, Celegorm’s fingers played a little dance between Caranthir’s. He smiled, one dimple winking out with its crooked tilt. “You’re my nicest brother. Have I told you that?”  
  
Caranthir scooted closer until his knees brushed into Celegorm’s side, a little, pleased smile creeping onto his mouth. Father said, the grim set releasing his mouth and light sparkling in his eyes again, “You should not be passing such secrets before the ears of one of those other brothers.”  
  
Celegorm snagged Curufin close and pinched his cheek lightly. Curufin scowled, swatting away the offending fingers. “Little baby doesn’t mind. He is my _cleverest_ brother, after all.”  
  
Curufin’s face warred between pleasure and annoyance. Father laughed, “And now what shall you appease Maedhros and Maglor with if you have all ready given away the place of kindest and cleverest?”  
  
Celegorm grinned. “Handsomest and fairest of course. A compliment on good looks never goes astray!” Father laughed and Celegorm glanced up at him through his lashes, “Am I in trouble, Father?” The way he widened his eyes in that look of pretty innocence he adopted when he knew he’d done wrong, sent Father’s mouth twitching.  
  
“No,” Father’s thumb brushed over the point of Celegorm’s nose. “I believe you have learned your lesson. Natural consequences are the best teachers, though I wish this consequence was not the cause of such pain.”  
  
“I will take pain over laundry duty for a week.” Celegorm shared a meaningful look with Caranthir, both of them having known that drudgery.  
  
Father helped Celegorm into his leggings. Caranthir lent a hand when Celegorm’s back braced against Father’s chest made the maneuver too awkward. “That is what you deserve when you paint green eyebrows on all Pelmariel’s sculptures.” But Father was still smiling. He’d laughed when he’d seen what Celegorm and Caranthir had done to Pelmariel’s ‘masterpieces.’ They’d not been the least repentant (though Father had not minded, assigning their punishment with little tweaks of their ears that felt more like approval than reprimands). They’d been very pleased with themselves when the man never came down from the city again to try and weasel his way into the High Prince’s favor.  
  
Father scooped Celegorm up in his arms, cradling him to his chest. Caranthir and Curufin hurried into their own leggings and snatched up their assortment of tunics and equipment before they dashed after their father’s long strides eating up the distance to the house.  
  
*  
  
“What is necessary to create sound?” Father crouched beside Maglor, who sat on his knees, legs folded under him, surrounded by a host of instruments like a king his councilors.  
  
Maglor’s child-face wore a serious expression, looking up at his father through bright, silver eyes, his finely shaped brows jutted together. “To make sound, something must vibrate.” He picked up the horn-like instrument in his lap, turning it over in his hands. The sunlight sliding in through the window shone on the polished bronze. The instrument bore the signs of Maglor’s beginner forging skills in its simplicity. The metal was naked of any adornment or design of beauty.  
  
Maglor brought the horn to his mouth and blew, a long, deep-throated sound spilling down its long tube and out its wide-mouthed opening. He let the note drop and ran his finger over the mouth piece, eyes deep with thought.  
  
“Have you solved the puzzle of this one?” Father’s forearms rested against his knees, a small smile tucked in the corner of his mouth as he watched Maglor work through it.  
  
“It is my lips, right, Father? My lips are vibrating.”  
  
Father’s smile bloomed into a wide one full of pride. “Yes.”  
  
Maglor’s shoulders sat a little straighter, face clearing of its serious study to display a glimpse of the pleasure beneath.  
  
Father eased Caranthir from his mind, the release like the slow withdraw of a hand from the velvet of a glove’s insides. Caranthir blinked, mind righting itself in its own domain. He found himself longing at once for the connections reforging. Father had warned him, when Father had first begun instructing him on the theory of Ósanwe, that the melding of minds could become an addictive sensation, as craved by the spirit as a body burned for physical pleasures. For to be inside another’s mind was the height of intimacy, and felt like the truest completion when the act was shared with one trusted and loved.  
  
Father took Caranthir’s face in his hands, tilting it up so he could examine his eyes. Father’s face wore the seriousness this most complex and dangerous of arts demanded. “How do you feel?”  
  
Caranthir licked his lips, unable to tear his eyes away from his father’s. The yearning to dive back into those depths and immerse himself in the mind behind pulled at him so powerfully his hands reflected the yearning, lifting to grasp Father’s shoulders, as if he could fall right into his father’s body.  
  
“Easy now,” Father’s hands fell to his shoulders. “It will lessen in a moment.”  
  
Caranthir made a desperate sound in the back of his throat. “Father. I need…” He pressed closer. Father gave him relief, letting him sinking into the fold of his arms. Caranthir’s arms clamped tight about his father’s body, squeezing, close, but needing more. He was out of control. The _need_ rushed through every cell in his body.  
  
His hands scrambled on Father’s back, as if he could dig himself inside. “Please, Father,” he lifted his head, seeking the window of his father’s eyes.  
  
“Shh, now. Ride it out.”  
  
But he couldn’t. The moment he had his father’s eyes, he threw away every warning, every instruction his father had spent weeks filling his head with, and tried to leap back into his father’s mind. But his father kept him out effortlessly, raising a wall of glass reflecting Father’s inner light a thousand-fold until Caranthir was drunk on light and sent firmly back into his body with a gasp.  
  
Father’s hands cradled his head, worry tucked into his brow. “Are you hurt?”  
  
“No.” He dropped his eyes from his father’s searching ones, ashamed at his own weakness and the careless way he’d handled his father’s mind in his rush to sate the addiction. “Forgive me.”  
  
“It is nothing,” Father accompanied his words with a caress of knuckles against Caranthir’s jaw. “The intensity of your response merely caught me off-guard. I have heard of even stronger reactions by an Elf to their first forays into the mind-arts, but your brothers did not display them. Through Celegorm did demand a fleet of embraces after. Maedhros and Maglor’s reactions were more subdued.”  
  
A flush climbed Caranthir’s neck, and he broke the embrace, trying to throw up a wall, all the more ashamed and angered by his weakness to hear not one of his brothers had been the same.  
  
His father did not allow him to curl himself about the shame and self-turned anger. He took Caranthir’s hands, working their balls open to hold them cupped in his own. “Your mother and I learned the mind-arts together. Her reaction was nothing out of the ordinary, but my own…” Father’s mouth lifted in a smirk. “Well, I will only say that Maedhros was conceived during those lessons.”  
  
A laugh startled out of Caranthir. The box his shoulders had made of themselves, closing him in and the world out, fell away. Father’s eyes sparkled. Shall we take the next step, or wait until tomorrow?”  
  
Caranthir weighed the question carefully, heedful of the danger of pushing himself too far, especially with the revelation of his more sensitive reaction to the mind-arts. But in the end he said, “One more trial today should not be more than I can manage.”  
  
“Very well.” Father took his face into his palms. Their warmth teased him with what was to come. Caranthir’s heart struck against his ribs in anticipation. That yearning to crawl inside his father had not been wholly rested. “Remember, your first time playing host to another’s mind is not a time to practice resistance. As we grow stronger and more skilled, I will teach you how to push me out and keep me from your mind entirely. But for now learn the feel of me. You might even experiment with directing selected memories to me.”  
  
Caranthir took a shaky breath. “Trust me,” Father whispered, leaning close enough his breath danced warm on Caranthir’s face. “I will be able to feel your distress if I stumble upon a memory you wish to keep private, and I _will_ pull out. I promise.”  
  
“I know. I do trust you, Father.” Caranthir’s hands came up to steady himself on his father’s elbows, cupping the backs of his father’s arms. “I am ready.”  
  
He met his father’s eyes. For a moment he stared into them, feeling nothing more than during the thousand of other occasions he’s looked into his father’s face, but then he felt it, a soft brush, sweet and warm and longed for. On instinct he relaxed into it, and discovered inside himself the way to open to his father’s mind knocking at the door of his own. And then Father pushed inside him, falling into him as Caranthir opened wider and wider, wanting to feel the fire and light and love so vast he drowned inside its embrace and named it the greatest pleasure he had ever known.  
  
His bliss consumed him so utterly he floated inside it a long moment before becoming aware of the memories flickering through him like the flashes of light: Celegorm’s voice in his ear as his brother sat behind him on the horse, hands arranging Caranthir’s on the bridle as his brother taught him how to ride; Maedhros’ chest vibrating against his back as Caranthir sat curled under the blanket on his big brother’s lap, the book Maedhros read to him spread out on their knees; Curufin’s smile the greatest beauty in the room as he ran after Caranthir, a little boy of pointy elbows, bright mind, and eternal curiosity; Curufin seeking him straight from the forge, soot still riding on his cheekbone and into the creases of his hands, to find Caranthir and thrown himself down in the grass beside him to plunge into an excited litany of every new wonder he’d seen since last they sat side-by-side; Curufin, older now, watching Caranthir from the corner of his eyes, warmth tightening in Caranthir’s chest, this one sip of maybe-Curufin-still-loves-me carrying him through the drought his own lashing tongue had sealed him away behind; Curufin’s hair, glittering with gems and a princely circlet of white gold, looking more breathtaking and unattainable than all the moments leading up to this, his wedding day, and Caranthir helpless, wounded, bleeding, _hating_ as Curufin took that undeserving girl’s hand in his fine-boned one made for passion and animation and everything that was beautiful in the world; the mesmerizing darkness of the grey inside Curufin’s eyes; the way light sliced off the curve of Curufin’s cheekbone; the temptation of Curufin’s mouth, forever begging for Caranthir’s lips; the lithe shape of Curufin’s body in nothing but an undershirt and leggings, the way Caranthir’s eyes strayed down when Curufin worked his way across the Hearth Room, bending as he picked up Curufinwë’s scattered toys, the curves of his ass on display and Caranthir helpless to tear his eyes away from the sight, Curufin seducing him without even trying; Caranthir turning restlessly in his bed, heat and want curled deep in his belly, stirring him to hardness from a dream of Curufin, Curufin, Curufin, his hand straying, longing, just a touch, just this one weakness, just one fantasy played out behind his eyelids where Curufin was _his_ , but his hand jerking away at the last moment, self-disgust wringing him dry—  
  
Father caught him in his arms as Caranthir’s mind emptied of his father in a withdraw intimately similar to a man pulling out of his lover’s body. Caranthir clung, trembling, against his father. The yearning twisted up his throat and the empty places his father had filled inside him gapped open like flesh peeled back from a wound. But the yearning did not drive him back into his father’s mind. All ready he was wrestling control over the art.  
  
Father’s hands slid down his back, one warm palm following the curving, bumpy road of his spine and eased him back until Father could examine his face.  
  
Caranthir swallowed. “I am all right.” But he could not bring himself to release his hold on his father, needing the physical connection, longing for something deeper, but forcing his body under his control.  
  
“You are strong,” Father’s thumb brushed against the skin of his neck, the touch full of comfort, acceptance. Caranthir wondered if it was more his father spoke of.  
  
Father would speak of the memories, even now Caranthir saw the words building in Father’s face, and Caranthir would not curl away. He _wanted_ his father to speak, though the need would never pass his lips. If Father had never discovered his secreted lust and love for Curufin, Caranthir did not know how he could have bore these last years. He had found such guilty comfort in his father’s continued insistence of Curufin’s love: a brother’s love, unwavering, and the hope for more. Father never stopped hoping, never stopped urging Caranthir to speak his heart, and Caranthir needed that hope, that assurance and complete acceptance he found in his father, even if the words of his love would never pass his lips.  
  
And now Father spoke, tipping the sweet cup of acceptance down his throat again, telling Caranthir it was no crime, no deed of shame, to find what release he could in fantasies. Father said it was unhealthy to deny himself so, that he could not keep it all inside. Caranthir loved him so much for accepting him, all of him. But though he needed to hear these words from his father’s mouth, he would never allow himself to pursue fantasies. It would drive him mad if he lived only on dreams.  
  
And dreams they only ever would be. But sometimes, when Curufin did not think he watched, Caranthir saw something in Curufin’s eyes. Just from the corners of his eyes he caught the ache that might yet have been love.  
  
Some small part of Curufin loved him still, and the glimpse of it doused the pain and cooled the sharpness of Caranthir’s tongue for a time, long enough that he could fall into a moment with Curufin when they were brothers once again, even almost-friends. What they once shared had been marred passed repair, but it was something. It was all he had. And if he spoke, if he loosed these words hoarded up under his tongue, burning the soft skin of its underside until it had sharpened like a blade, he would have nothing.  
  
As often as Caranthir dreamed of Curufin opening new eyes upon him and setting him ablaze with words of love, he dreamed another dream. In it Curufin did not need to use his fists to strike the blow, and his words were nothing as bitter but swallowable as, ‘I love you, but not like that.’ No, in those dreams Curufin’s face twisted in disgust, and his words sliced Caranthir to his knees, heart a ruined rag in his chest.  
  



	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Curufinwë is Celebrimbor’s father-name in this story.

The Secret Language Brother   
Chapter 3  
  
It was one of those days the knife-edged pain of his broken heart did not sharpen the blade of his tongue. The fires slid back down his throat with a single look from Curufin he caught out of the corner of his eye. Curufin looked at him like his every breath was something precious. Caranthir fell into that look, drinking of it like the sweetest nectar and struggling not to reveal that to him Curufin was beauty itself.  
  
The truce called began with a tentative conversation in which they agreed on the rising danger of the House of Indis and led into a debate over the possibilities of undiscovered minerals in Endor and how abundant and accessible its veins of Mithril and gemstone deposits might be. These were not concerns Caranthir often turned his mind to, but he snatched up anything that gave him an excuse to prolong this moment of almost-friendship between them.  
  
Father came in from the forge for luncheon, and Curufin’s eyes turned to the window and blinked to see the day so far advanced. He yet wore soot-stained clothing from an early morning of crafting, having meant to return to the forge before the delight of a rare conversation with Caranthir seduced him.  
  
Over their meal, Father and Curufin steered the conversation Caranthir and Curufin had begun into one speculating and theorizing on the Elves left behind in that world turned legend in the memories of many a follower of Fëanor. Father and Curufin being who they were, the language of their sundered kin was an oft debated topic. Their meal drew to a close and Curufin announced his intention to walk up to the palace, seeking some linguistic tome in the Corridor of Lore Caranthir had never heard of, all in pursuit of discovering the purest form of an Avarian word only Father and Curufin still cared about.   
  
Caranthir accompanied Curufin, rising and following him out into the streets without a word of his intent beforehand. Curufin said nothing when Caranthir reached his shoulder and they walked along in silence, though Caranthir felt his eyes on his face. By the time they reached the palace the silence had grown companionable, and almost, if Caranthir let himself drift back to the days of their blissful, happy youths, he could image he walked side-by-side with his best friend, his favorite person in the world, the one who would always love him.  
  
Traversing the palace corridors was as tedious as usual, made the more so when courtiers only slimly acquainted with their father mistook Curufin for Fëanor at first glance. Curufin swiftly, and not bothering with diplomacy, tore aside their blunder. When Curufin was in the mood for it, Caranthir had seen him toy with these poor fools, playing the role of Fëanor, and very well too, holding whole conversations with the Elves who mistook him none the wiser. Today Curufin’s mind was set upon knowledge and had no patience for delays.  
  
When they gained the Corridor of Lore, they left the worst of the clinger-ons behind, but not all. Scholars and Masters roamed here, some few calling Fëanor friend, but most either seizing on a son of Fëanor like a sycophant or to pick a bone with. Caranthir sent these off with a sneer, words like whips at their scuttling backs.   
  
He caught Curufin looking at him, a little smile in the corner of his mouth. Curufin swiftly looked away, pretending to be engrossed in the book he’d snatched from the nearest shelf. Caranthir’s eyes trailed down the length of Curufin’s turned back, following its gentle curve down to the shape of his ass and the length of his legs.   
  
He tore his eyes away. When he stole another glance back, wanting to watch the way Laurelin’s light slid off the black gloss of Curufin’s hair like glass, he found Curufin looking back at him from over the line of his shoulder. Curufin’s eyes glittered smoky-grey under the curl of long, sooty lashes.  
  
Caranthir’s eyes jerked away as if burned. He stabbed his chin at the aisle winding deeper into the Great Library, “I will be there when you have what you need.” He turned, boots striking sharply against the stones, and strode away.  
  
He submerged himself in the science section. He selected a book compiled of his father’s essays and those noteworthy others who assembled something resembling an intelligent counter-argument. He had read these works of his father before, having read all his father’s writings and treasuring the way they opened to him the mind of the man his father was today as well as the young man he’d once been. The essays of his father’s youth were Caranthir’s favorite study, for they were like discovering the tender bud of a fire-rose his eyes have never before beheld.  
  
The counter-arguments he had not read before, and lost himself in them, composing fiery arguments in retaliation as well as ones steeped in his father’s (and his confirming) calculations. His father had proved with sound fact that the heavily bodies shining so bright and close to Arda were not, in fact, stars. The stars followed their own paths, set in place by Varda, but these lesser bodies orbited Arda.   
  
Fëanor had been the first to point out that such a phenomenon ran counter to every law of gravity when Lumbar and Alcarinquë’s far greater mass was taken into account, but Fëanor hypothesized that the Valar themselves generated an unknown factor of pull. Not gravitational, but something in the Valar’s Power was pulling these lesser bodies into orbit around Arda.   
  
Those scholars not deserving of the name ran to the Valar with Fëanor’s hypothesis, seeking its confirmation or rebuttal without the use of their own minds. Caranthir’s lip curled, disgusted. Of course his father had been proved right, but that was not the point. If a man could not form an opinion without the hand-holding of another being, Caranthir dismissed the limited intellect they had been birthed with on principle, holding them in contempt.  
  
He emerged from the land of stars and theories and went in search of Curufin. The afternoon had slipped by and he expected to find his brother as lost in the research of a dead language as he had been in the mysteries of the Ilmen. Instead he found Curufin sat before a south facing window whose glass had been burnished gold as the hour of the Mingling approached. No book spread open on Curufin’s palms, and a stack of tomes lay forgotten on the table beside his elbow, shoved back to make room for him to learn eagerly towards the Elf seated beside him. One glance and Caranthir read Curufin’s interest in the conversation. Curufin’s eyes were lit like lamps dwelt behind them, and his hands danced through the air as his torso angled closer to his neighbor.  
  
Finrod, son of Indis’ soft-boned youngest son, shone like a pale gold blossom under Laurelin’s light. His hair flowing about his shoulders in loose waves only a scattering of braids held back from his face and adorned with luscious pearls and glimmering sapphires. His eyes, a delicate blue, were wide-set and almond shaped, lending his face an openness of expression as well as a remarkable beauty.  
  
Caranthir’s mouth twisted. The children of Indis were fair indeed, but slick as serpents. Yet something in this one had caught Curufin’s attention.  
  
“It is a myth long-since rebutted by scientific fact,” Curufin said, dismissive and yet waiting for Finrod’s reply, as if Finrod son of Finarfin had anything worth listening to!  
  
“Indeed, it is a myth, part of our people’s almost forgotten mythology.”  
  
“Forgotten?” Curufin raised a brow. “Perhaps in your circles, but not so in all. Among my father’s people there are many recordings of the old tales in their varied and shifting forms. It is a piece of our people’s culture, long disproven tales as they are.”  
  
Finrod leaned forward, face picking up heightened animation, though all ready pink had dusted the fine curves of his cheekbones like a doll with a painted-on blush. “Have the old tales truly been collected and preserved thus? Well then I count it a thing well-done. I would see the Teleri do the same, for it is amongst the Shore Folk that the myths yet live as more than myths in the hearts and minds of pockets of Elves. On Tol Eressëa you can hear the old tales told as if they are as great a truth as the Trees’ shining.”  
  
Curufin frowned. “There are yet those who believe in them? Even among the most sheltered of Noldor hamlets the old tales have faded from truth into mythology.”  
  
“The spreading of ideas and new discoveries is slower amongst the Teleri. Their view of the world is more inclined towards contentment in what they possess than in a search for improvement or change. In little villages along the coast you can still hear mothers instructing their children on why the waves roll in from the deep. They tell the story of how the vibrations from Uinen’s singing under the sea ripples out to form the waves, as if it were a foundational truth of the world.” Finrod’s eyes brightened to brilliance as his voice picked up passion.   
  
Curufin’s gaze dropped to Finrod’s mouth as it shaped the words, and Caranthir’s belly tightened. Finrod carried on, “We are in the midst of a fascinating period in our people’s mythology as it moves from belief into myth. I am both Noldo and one of the Teler outside the insular communities who yet hold onto the old tales as truth, and thus, like the Noldor and Vanyar, can see the mythology for what it is. Yet I can also walk among those who hear the story of Uinen’s song and hold it as truth, as they do the Earth Mother who birthed the mountain ranges and rivers from her earth-brown womb and the story of how the Elves themselves were born of the stars. What a richness of study I have found in these stories that make up the tapestry of our mythology, side-by-side with the tales of heroes, shape-shifters, and sentient beasts all passed down from Cuiviénen and embellished along the Great Journey!” Finrod seemed to vibrate with life. The golden light ate up every pore of his skin, and set his eyes shining with the natural brilliance of his _fëa_ glowing within.   
  
Caranthir’s throat tightened unto pain at the way Curufin looked at Finrod, granting Finrod’s words his sole attention, rising Finrod up into someone worthy of notice. Caranthir could see it all in the intensity of Curufin’s eyes upon Finrod’s face. “You were not mistaken in claiming to have made a study of this, yet what is your purpose in it? I hear no hypothesis or theory you mean to prove in your words.”  
  
Finrod cocked his head, seeming to look at Curufin for the first time, the shroud of his pleasure in his own voice drawn aside. Caranthir would have the pompous ass drowning in self-absorption until the end of the world if it meant Finrod would never notice the way Curufin was looking at him. But some of the tension breathed out of Caranthir’s shoulders when Finrod looked but did not see. He should not have feared. Curufin’s interest was apparent to him who knew his brother like the twin of his own heart, but shuttered from any who did not know where to look to see the signs.  
  
“Does one always need a reason to purpose knowledge? Is not the study of the shifting sands of human nature and culture enough?”  
  
Curufin used his hands to sweep away the questions like the pieces of a chess set. “At times, knowledge for knowledge sake can be a worthy goal, but there is far less satisfaction in its archival if nothing lies behind the pursuit. Better to aim for creation, a mystery unraveled, a problem solved, then to store up knowledge in the head without direction.”  
  
Finrod’s mouth pursed. “It is not useless knowledge.”  
  
“I did not say it was. I named it _directionless_ ,” Curufin countered, hands punctuating for emphasis.  
  
Finrod’s voice picked up a clip. “The binding of the pursuit of knowledge is like roping a ship to the shore line. The greatest discoveries lie in uncharted, _directionless_ , sailing as much as it does in the proving of a theory.”  
  
“The greatest _wastes of time_ lie in such pursuits. As well as inaccuracies. Without the borders of the known to set against the unknown, a mind stumbles into the folly of wild speculations without any of the tools necessary to prove its findings valid. Delve into the unknown by all means, invent, theorize, experiment, but do so with a _purpose_ and the building blocks to make _use_ of the knowledge gleaned by way of proof and re-creation.”  
  
Finrod frowned. His face was an open battle between the fingers of self-doubt and confidence in his own cleverness. Caranthir crossed his arms over his chest, unimpressed. Finrod, the golden son of Finarfin, had probably spent his whole life listening to how clever he was, praise for his brilliance and beauty raining down on his Vanya-fair head like flower petals.   
  
Caranthir would not be surprised to learn no one had ever challenged Finrod’s beliefs before today, only nodded along, swept up in the shine of Finrod’s presentation and the confidence of his posture which meant he _must_ be right. And here came Curufin who was vastly cleverer and had spent all his life having his every argument and theory inspected under criticism, like any healthy belief must be baptized if it were to prove itself truth. Neither their father nor brothers had let Curufin, or any son of Fëanor, coast along without a good solid challenge and demand for proof. The pride and words of praise that were as generously showered on them as the critic would have lost their sweetness without the gauntlet of fire come before.  
  
Finrod’s eyes flickered off Curufin’s face as his gaze turned inward, but their drift snagged on Caranthir filling the space between two bookshelves, jaw set, arms crossed, and radiating dislike as he glared back at Finrod. Finrod did not shrink under the glare.   
  
Caranthir attacked, wanting to rip the perfection off Finrod’s face, wanting to drive him so far away even the shadow of him was erased from Curufin’s eyes. “As _thrilling_ as your insights into the nature of all manner of things beyond your ken are to your multitudes of admires, I find myself exceedingly underwhelmed.”  
  
Finrod rose, all swan-grace that set in the backs of Caranthir’s teeth, and inclined his head at Caranthir but aimed his words at Curufin, “I see your brother has come to fetch you.”  
  
Curufin’s eyes narrowed at the corner-edge of condescension in the words. Good. Let him see Finrod for the descendent of Indis he was.   
  
Curufin stood, elegant and blazing like a star, outshining Finrod in every way. “My brother does not play fetch like a dog. He has been combing through Tirion’s bastion of great works, though I doubt he found anything he could not debunk in the work of an afternoon.”  
  
The arrogance in the words pressed Finrod’s mouth tight, but set a pulse of pride and love down Caranthir’s spine. “I am sure,” Finrod said, sarcasm dripping from the words, and dislike laid bare in his voice. “I will leave you to it, then.”   
  
Caranthir and Curufin watched Finrod stride away, both marking the retreating back until the sway of pale gold hair had been removed from them. Only when they were alone did Caranthir break the silence, rounding on Curufin. “What was that?”  
  
Curufin had picked up his discarded stack of books. He tucked them into his elbow’s cook and raised a cool brow back at Caranthir’s glower. “What was what?”  
  
“That _thing_ with Indis’ oh-so-perfect grandson!” Caranthir snapped off the words.  
  
Curufin brushed passed him. Caranthir turned with him like a star fixed in orbit, body curving with Curufin’s shoulder, feet pulling him after Curufin’s walking away. “There was no _thing_. I have hardly spoken to him in my life. Why would I?”  
  
“You did now,” his temper roused as fear coiled in his throat.   
  
Maybe, if Curufin just admitted it, looked Caranthir in the eye as he said a bit of sexual attraction meant nothing, everything would be all right. But Curufin danced, and Caranthir couldn’t bear it. He couldn’t bear it! Was Elweth not blow enough? Must he watch Curufin give yet another what he would forever be denied?  
  
Curufin shoved his borrowed books with a touch of roughness back into the empty gaps awaiting their return in the bookshelves. He did not look at Caranthir, but kept his face in determined profile. “It was a meaningless exchange. Nothing more.”  
  
Caranthir’s anger flooded up, drowning out all softness. It ambushed him, leaving him defenseless in the grip of its storm. His hand came out and latched onto Curufin’s bicep, spinning Curufin around, demanding Curufin’s attention. “It looked far cozier than _nothing_.”  
  
Curufin shook him off, and Caranthir let him. Even caught in his temper’s storm, he was unable to press down upon Curufin like a hammer-stroke even if it yielded results. But he could not bear Curufin’s turned back, so he planted his palm in the lip of the shelf above Curufin’s head and cornered Curufin against the bookshelf without quite touching, his larger frame lending him those few extra inches that allowed him to look down into Curufin’s upturned face.  
  
Curufin’s eyes flashed up at him, not the least cowed. Good. That was how it should be: Curufin’s eyes close and defiant, lighting-bright, his bones as inviting in their curves as they were edged, shockingly beautiful.   
  
Curufin leaning not away, but into him, body hovering so close Caranthir could feel the heat like a summer thunderstorm building between them. His breath sucked in between the clench of his teeth, rough and heavy, body singing with _want_ , but denied, forever denied, and the pain of it overridden by the flash of his temper, as if fury could ever make it hurt any less.  
  
“Why are you so curious?” Curufin’s had his fangs out, words dipped in them, sharp and lethal. And Caranthir wanted nothing so much as to kiss him. “It is not as if _we_ are friends. Are we, _Brother_?”  
  
Caranthir’s whole body tensed as if he’d taken a blow. His face went wooden, but what hurt the worst was the pain behind the words, the pain he’d plowed into his brother’s heart. His little brother, his best friend, his love above all loves. He had hurt him worse than anyone had ever hurt him. And he couldn’t…he couldn’t, even now, sooth that heartache, because even now his body burned for the beauty set before him, the desire ridding just under his skin, held by the thinnest of threads. And he didn’t know how to go back to being Curufin’s brother, the confident and protector of Curufin’s heart, when everyday was a struggle to keep all the things he yearned to say sewn up in his mouth, like vipers in a cage, for these words of love would destroy _everything_.  
  
But some part of Curufin still loved him, and it flickered now from the lash his words had struck Caranthir with. “I did not…” Curufin’s tongue came out, moistening his lips. Caranthir’s eyes followed the movement, helpless, enslaved, raging, wanting to taste that ripe mouth and claim it for his own. Curufin’s fingers curled over Caranthir’s forearm, and Caranthir’s breath sucked in from the heat of that single touch twisting the lust deeper into him. “Caranthir, I wish…” Curufin’s face flickered, a moment of vulnerability. He loved Caranthir, as a brother, but he loved him.  
  
“Curufin.” Caranthir gasped on the name, like it carried the breath of stars.   
  
Curufin’s head dropped into his shoulder, resting there like it used to when they were children and Curufin had finished venting all his frustrations into Caranthir’s ear, and then Caranthir would wrap an arm about Curufin’s waist and kiss him softly, innocently, on the temple and tell him without words that he was cherished.  
  
Caranthir’s hand shook as it dared to close over Curufin’s back, feeling the strength and leanness of a body full come into manhood. Curufin sighed against his neck, breath caressing his skin as the scent of Curufin overwhelmed him. He _wanted_. Even into this moment teetering towards healing, the want crawled between them, poisoning his touch, his every thought, taunting him with what he would never have.  
  
But Curufin fit so perfectly in his arms, so trusting even after every cruel, hateful thing Caranthir had ever vomited up into the air between them like spinning a wall of Keep Away! He couldn’t bear to pick up works like spikes and drive them into all Curufin’s tender places. He was in awe that Curufin had peeled back the armor enough to let him catch a peek at his soft places one more time.  
  
But nor could he go back to what he’d ruined with systematic purpose. He couldn’t give Curufin what he sought anymore than Curufin could give him what he longed for.   
  
He eased Curufin from his arms. His heart screamed against the loss, but his body would not have been able to control itself for much longer. For all Caranthir’s gentleness, Curufin’s face began to seal itself shut, reading this as a rejection. It was, but it wasn’t, never could be, for it was _Curufin_.  
  
Curufin straightened, brushing the hair back from his brow, eyes averting. “I want to be home for Curufinwë by suppertime.” He turned and set a brisk pace down the aisle.   
  
Caranthir steadied himself with a deep gulp of air. They were not parting with cruel words, they were not even parting, why couldn’t he be content with that? Why did the coolness in Curufin’s voice have to slice him as deeply as words thrown like daggers?   
  
He followed Curufin from the Great Library. They walked side-by-side but the companionship from earlier was gone. Caranthir told himself he could endure this distance like he had endured them all, living for the next moment the barriers fell long enough the spring-rains of Curufin’s almost-friendship watered his desert-heart again.  
  
*  
  
His brothers screamed in unified anguished as Father burnt alive in their arms. They were still screaming.   
  
He could hear Maglor’s scream in the stripped bareness of his voice, Celegorm’s in the violence of his body cutting through the air, unable to find rest, the twins’ in the bleakness of their eyes, and Curufin…Curufin had screamed like he looked into his deepest nightmares that had crawled into the waking world; he’d screamed like it was his body burning. If Celegorm and Caranthir had not wrestled Curufin back from his cling (no, no, no, please, Father, please, I will do anything, anything, just don’t leave, don’t leave me!) to Father’s body, Curufin would have burned along with Father. Curufin had wanted to.   
  
The night after Father…left them, Caranthir woke to find Curufin turning his dagger over and over in his hands, eyes mesmerized by the play of firelight along the blade’s face and maybe something more, maybe something that sung of an end to this pain. Caranthir watched, unmoving, hardly breathing, Curufinwë was a warm weight pressed against his side, Celegorm’s soft breaths and Maglor’s gently rising chest came from the next bed over with the twins entwined in the furthest. Curufin slipped the dagger back into its sheath in the end, and Caranthir closed his eyes, feigning sleep, as the bed dipped and Curufin crawled in on Curufinwë’s other side.  
  
The world turned grey after Father’s death, and they’d told themselves like the fools they’d been that nothing could be worse than this. And then Maedhros was taken or dead, gone forever either way. A blackness fell over them, a heaviness of spirit that infected the mind, until every day was a struggle to drag themselves through.  
  
Every moment Caranthir feared for Curufin, and then he had to add Maglor to his watch, afraid he’d lost two brothers when they’d taken Maedhros. He thanked Father that they’d burned the ships when Curufin started talking madness about fighting Valar and not letting them steal Father from them and how Alqualondë was nothing, _nothing_ , to the destruction Curufin would bring down on the Valar’s heads. It marked a return to sanity when Curufin’s curses and promises of death shifted from the seemingly unassailable power of the combined might of the Valar to the destruction of one.  
  
Caranthir and Celegorm tethered Curufin to every day (just one more, tomorrow will be easier, it had to be) with work. Curufin lost himself in it, and there was no end to the amount laying in wait for them as they labored to build some semblance of a new life in dark, strange lands.   
  
The hours before sleep took them were the worst. Sleep evaded Caranthir. He would rise and stare long at his brother’s tent, and later the door or window of Curufin’s rooms, watching until the lamps were blown out and exhaustion shuffled Curufin to bed, mind too worn down for grief to prey on him tonight. On the nights the hours drained away and still Curufin burned the lamps, working himself passed the bone, Caranthir would come and put Curufin to bed himself, ignoring the snarls and words like fistfights with Curufin’s bleeding heart behind each punch. In the quiet moments when the fight had fled and Curufin allowed Caranthir to slip off his boots and pull his tunic over his head before coaxing him down on the bed and tucking him in, soft words would drop from Curufin’s lips at times, soft words reflecting the agony within. “Do you think there are stars where he is, Caranthir?” Curufin’s eyes were vulnerable as a child’s. “There has to be stars.”   
  
Caranthir took Curufin’s beautiful wrists into his hands and promised that there were stars, yes, of course there were, Father was up there among them now. It was like in the old tales that told of the Elves’ birth from those heavenly bodies. The stars had drawn Father back to them, for how could they not long for him when Father outshone them all?   
  
Curufin nodded into the words, body melting into Caranthir’s like they were children again and Curufin sought out the steady warmth of his big brother’s embrace. “We will get Father back,” Curufin swore, voice fractured with grief but tenacious as steel. Caranthir slipped his arm about his frail, indomitable brother, pressed a kiss into Curufin’s temple, and swore the same.  
  
Now there were no more confessions and comforts in the vulnerable hours of the night. But Caranthir never languished in his careful, silent watch over his brothers.  
  
He found Curufin buried in work. Maps, architectural designs, petitions, troop movements, a sketch of a herb the Sindar used for healing burns, Curufinwë’s report on the number of swords and shields and helms the forges had turned out this week, a scout’s hastily scrawled message of an Orc band sniffling around the mountain’s foothills, all were strewn over Curufin’s desk and the heavy, dark wood of the council table dominating the room’s center.  
  
Curufin looked up as Caranthir cut through the room. If the bones of his face had curved sharp in Valinor, it was nothing to their sleek cut now the hollows beneath his cheeks had deepened. He wasn’t eating enough, and the burn of his eyes resembled fever-delirium, nothing like the healthy way they used to light up with the thrill of a discovery.   
  
Curufin frowned. “I do not have time for that today,” he stabbed a finger at the rolls of parchments and research journals Caranthir dropped atop the work already spread over the council table, covering the eight-point star carved into the table’s face.   
  
Caranthir did not turn back to Curufin as he made room for his research by sweeping the lesser work away, uncaring if some of Curufin’s scrolls rolled off the table’s edge and onto the floor. “Arda is tilted on her axis. That is the reason for the seasons.”  
  
Curufin twitched. Caranthir watch him from the corner of his eye as Curufin’s scowl deepened and he bent determinedly over his work, making a good show of disinterest, but Caranthir knew his brother. Curufin wanted this as much as he needed it.  
  
“My current hypothesis is that Tilion’s gravitational pull is somehow causing the tilt, but I have only begun that research. Regardless, the tilt explains the seasons far better than Grosion’s ridiculous theory that Arien requires a period of rest in which her light wanes, much as the Trees refreshed themselves in the winter months in Valinor. While this discovery does not have any bearing on the calendar we are creating, I would like to plot the new tides closer and determine if they are affected by the tilt.”  
  
Curufin’s thirst for what Caranthir offered won him at last. He abandoned his chair, unable to keep himself from striding around the table and snatching up Caranthir’s most recent calculations to run a hungry, critical eye over them. Curufin hummed as he seized a quill, dipped it hastily in a pot of ink, and began checking Caranthir’s work with his own.  
  
Curufin used the base of the shorter sun-year they had agreed upon, having spent months determining it and debating whether Arda orbited Arien or she orbited them as the planets once had.  
  
Curufin slid a glance up at him from his work, a glitter of challenge and the delight of the debate in his eyes that sent Caranthir’s chest tightening with something too mournful for what was lost to be happiness. “Even if these calculations run turn, they are all based upon your theory that Arda orbits Arien. If, however, Arda is stationary in the llmen, then an entirely different hypothesize could be proved for the reasoning behind the seasons.”  
  
Caranthir ate these moments up like he’d once lived for the brokenness of the nights where he held Curufin one more time in his arms. Science, discoveries, research, hypothesizes, these were how he reached Curufin now all the other doors had been shut with ice. “The difference in mass is irrevocable proof that—”  
  
“But Lumbar and Alcarinquë both possess masses vastly superior to Arda’s, and yet the Valar’s Power once pulled them into orbit around Arda.” Curufin abandoned the calculations to fix Caranthir with a gaze edging towards excitement and confidence in his arguments, for the belief that Arda hung stationary in the llmen was one Father had fashioned. Curufin clung to every theory Father had died believing, even though Father had freely tossed his own theories aside the moment he disproved them. But Curufin could not accept that Fëanor might have died believing a faulty theory, even a Fëanor who had never seen the sun and moon’s rising.   
  
“Father _proved_ Arda to be a stationary body in the Ilmen when we walked to the uttermost West and looked into the sea of stars beyond! A sea that Arda moved not within but which moved _around_ her as a crowd must break around a boulder in its path!” Curufin’s eyes shone with the fire of passions that only this could re-light: only with Father pulled so close the ghost of him sat beside them at the table, his voice carried out of the past, deep and rich with warmth, overflowing with love, as it had been before the Oath.  
  
Caranthir leaned closer to this vision of Curufin as he had once been, and who he loved as much as he loved the cut-glass heart Curufin had become. “Father took us to the Doors of Night where the West met the East in a barrier of stars the Valar had lifted against Morgoth, sealing Valinor away from an invasion out of the West as they raised the Pelori like a fence against the East. Father theorized that one could not sail indefinitely West or East, because that strip of universe the Valar had cut through Arda served to segregate Valinor from the rest of the world as well as defend it.”   
  
Caranthir pressed closer still, caught up in the thrill of Curufin’s intense gaze all for him and the way Curufin’s too-sharp cheekbones picked up color. He almost couldn’t swallow through the lump in his throat from the terrible ache and longing for what once was. He would wrap this moment up and cherish it in the heart of him. It would warm him like an ember long after the grey worked back into Curufin’s cheeks and his eyes burned with nothing so pure, so _healthy_ , as this passion.  
  
“What if it was nothing but an illusion though?” He said, voice little more than breath, before he clamped tight over the arousal that had no place in this world of grief and heaviness of souls. He was here to help his brother, not bed him.   
  
“Think of it,” he pressed on, settling back into his argument, brushing aside the want. “The Valar claimed the barrier of stars found at that uttermost West of Valinor was a window Varda had opened into the llmen. But what if it was nothing more than a pretty picture? And like a painting, could strive towards capturing realism but never fully achieve it. Is it not folly to base any of our theories on the cage the Valar fashioned for us in Valinor? I say throw all their teachings and ‘wisdoms’ out with the waste and let us start afresh, with no ‘truth’ the Valar ‘revealed’ to us to clog our sight.”  
  
But Curufin’s mouth pulled down. “Father’s sight was never clogged, though he had to burn through the shrouds the Valar sought to wrap him in.”  
  
Caranthir’s hand curled into a fist against the table top, fingers aching to reach out and take Curufin’s hand in his. “Of course Father’s sight was never clogged. He was not like the rest. He did not beg the Valar for their teachings and never swallowed any of the ‘discoveries’ those who did claimed without rigorous testing on his own part. I want…” Curufin looked back at him, awaiting Caranthir’s next words because in this moment the hurts that had torn them apart were bridged.   
  
Caranthir’s fingers twitched. He curled them tighter into his palm. “I want to be free of Valinor and the Valar’s lies, just like Father dreamed for us.”  
  
Curufin looked at him a long moment, before his hand slid across the table and settled over the back of Caranthir’s balled fist. Caranthir stared down at it. How perfectly their hands fit together, as if they had been made as one in their mother’s womb.   
  
“When we have the Silmarils back,” Curufin said, voice shaking on the conviction in the words, “We will return to Valinor, march upon Mandos’ Halls, and free Father. And then it will be as he dreamed. We will build kingdoms here, under the light of his jewels, lands of freedom where no laws but our own bind us. We will be unfettered by any Vala’s heel. Utterly free and whole again.”


	4. Chapter 4

The Secret Language Brother  
Chapter 4

Caranthir didn’t bother scowling at the servant who ran up to take his horse’s reigns despite the less than discrete distaste in the man’s eyes. The fool wasn’t worth his time. 

He swept passed, black cloak snapping behind him in the brisk wind blown off Lake Mirthrim. As he marched down the rows of tents, Fingolfin’s people scuttled out of his way or paused to favor him with dark looks. When some grew so bold as to mutter insults under their breath, Caranthir snowed them his teeth like the curled lip of a wolf. That shut them up, fleeing like rabbits before him. 

He sneered. So much for the vaulted bravery of these back-stabbing cowards. He’d known the Helcaraxë hadn’t improved them one iota. If anything they were more self-righteous, as if they carried their toils and griefs like a shinny badge pinned to their breasts, or a sword they took out and waved at the Fëanorions’ noses, trying to cow them into guilt. 

Caranthir scoffed at the very thought. Their hardships were of their own making. Father had not forced them to follow him, not from Tirion and not across the Ice. If they wanted someone to blame for the Helcaraxë they should look to the king they crowned so eagerly behind Father’s back.

He reached Maedhros’ tent and was favored with another look of abhorrence from guards at its flap. As if anything they felt could touch _him_ , a son of Fëanor!

Fingolfin had shown the only glimmer of wisdom Caranthir could credit him for when he’d not attempted to keep Maedhros from his brothers after the rescue. If he had, Caranthir’s voice would have been raised alongside Curufin and Celegorm’s, threatening violence if Fingolfin did not hand their brother over this instant! But only threats. He would not have carried them out any more than Curufin or Celegorm would have gone to war with Fingolfin and his people. 

It wasn’t that Caranthir thought they would lose, but the reality of what it might cost them held his hand. Would he burry another brother for the sake of pride? And love too, for he longed to have Maedhros close again, back within the arms of his true family, but Fingolfin was no threat to Maedhros’ health. He was no Morgoth, and Caranthir had chosen, along with all his brothers, to leave Maedhros to Morgoth’s whims.

He did not allow his step to falter, even as the familiar hand reached through his chest to squeeze about his heart; grief wrung from it like water from a rag. Not one moment in every day of every year that Maedhros had been lost to them had he stopped missing his eldest brother. Not one night did he lay himself down to sleep when his heart and mind had not reached out to Maedhros, longing, and drowning in despair. 

But the decision had been made, Curufin’s coldly logical words had stripped the sentiment away from the choice to refuse Morgoth’s terms: One: Morgoth was a liar and betrayer, no pack with him was worth so much spit. Two: Maedhros never would have chosen to trade a brother’s life for his own, and that was what it would cost them, at the least, to free Maedhros (if he was even still alive). Did they image Maedhros would known any joy in his release if the price paid was Maglor’s life, the twins’? 

Caranthir’s heart had answered with Maedhros’ last words to them ringing like their Father’s voice, not to be disobeyed: No. 

When news of Fingon’s rash plunge North to Angband trickled into the Fëanorion’s camp, Caranthir had been as furious as pathetically hopeful. He’d wanted, _desperately_ , to believe Fingon could succeeded, but Fingon would fail. How dare Fingon’s recklessness force the horror of watching his torture, even death, upon Maedhros? 

But Fingon achieved the impossible and brought Maedhros home, and Caranthir didn’t know if he despised Fingon or loved him, just a little. It was uncomfortably close to love when Fingon spoke up for the sons of Fëanor’s right to visit their brother’s sick (healing) bed. Fingon had proved himself, astonishingly, almost, _almost_ , worthy of Maedhros’ high regard. 

One of the guards hissed about cowards. It was a slight slapped in the sons of Fëanor’s faces many times since Fingon ‘dared’ what they had not. Caranthir’s hand fisted on his sword hilt as he threw his eyes at the cretin like the curved blades of tanning knives that scraped the flesh off hides. “I had not heard Fingon rode out with a company of shinny heroes when he left for Thangorodrim. I had heard he went alone. But perhaps I misheard. So _you_ than walked with your prince into the bowels of hell?” His lip curled as the guard’s face picked up a flush. “You must give us the tale of your deeds so the bards might sing of them.”

The other guard spoke up, spine reaching for pride as he met Caranthir’s withering gaze. “At least he did not abandon his brother to the wolves!”

Caranthir bared his teeth, “No. Just the prince he claims to love.” 

He did not waste anymore time of the sons of pigs, and jerked the tent flap open. He let it snap back behind him with a satisfying slap that cut off the guard’s flush-faced and their bull-headed replies as the meaningless drivel they were.

A heavy silence permeated the tent. A lit lamp set the wool screen separating the outer chamber from the inner aglow with an orange light, but the only other light came from the hundred pin-prick holes in the wool’s weaving which transformed the tent’s roof and walls into a canopy of stars.

His firm strides across to the inner room dropped silent as falling snow into the thick rugs spread from tent corner-to-tent corner. He froze as he drew the fur covering back from the screen’s opening.

Curufin sat beside Maedhros’ bed. Curufin had not visited Maedhros since that first time when they all rode the seemingly endless distance between Fingolfin and their camp together. Always an excuse of some task or another fell swift as water from his mouth when one of his brothers pressed him over his absence from Maedhros’ side, and when excuses did not allow him to slip off, he beat them back with ice-sharp words, face as soft as tundra.

Curufin’s hands cradled his head as if his neck had given out under the burden of its weight. His body did not tremble with sobs. He held his spine ridged despite its bow. There was something…unkempt about his appearance. 

Caranthir’s chest tightened. Curufin’s hair fell about his shoulders unmade and carrying snarls, and his clothes did not sit on his frame with that crisp, refined air he cultivated so carefully, maintaining it like a soldier his armor. 

Caranthir’s watch upon Curufin had slipped since Maedhros’ return, for Maedhros’ need seemed the greater. He berated himself for not hounding Curufin into proper sleep and meals and dragging him away from the black chasms in his mind waiting to swallow him whole. What had Celegorm been up to that he allowed Curufin to fall into such a state?

That Curufin did not pull himself together, snap his back sword-straight, and turn his unyielding and fever-bright gaze on Caranthir, revealed how deep Curufin had sunk into himself to not have heard Caranthir’s coming.

Maedhros lay as still and unresponsive as a corpse, eyes open but staring out into nothing (or into horrors his mind had not broken free of). 

Maedhros had woken at last from the deep healing sleep he’d fallen into after the rescue a week ago, but had yet to speak a word or respond in anyway. The healers flittered about, driven to anxiety or snappishness by Fingon’s whip-lash moods, stubbornly optimistic one moment and impatient and furious the next. His temper ruled him as he blamed everyone from Morgoth to Fëanor to the healers to himself for Maedhros’ catatonic state.

The air carried the fresh scent of healing herbs, but under it lingered the metallic tang of blood and the sourness of infection and _pain_. The book Caranthir had left on the bedside table beside the fresh change of bandages lay untouched, awaiting his next vigil at his brother’s bedside where he read aloud long into the night until Maglor or Fingon or another of his brothers came to claim the place of watcher.

His gaze drifted at last to Maedhros’ right wrist where it lay above the bedcover, folded like a wing over Maedhros’ stomach. White bandages still covered it, as they covered most of Maedhros’ body, but the unnaturalness of the wrist’s empty ending still pounded sorrow like nails into his chest. But the missing hand was only the most visible part of Maedhros lost during his imprisonment. There were many precious parts of Maedhros that had yet to come home to them, but unlike a severed hand, Caranthir refused to believe they were lost forever.

Curufin mumbled something into his hands and lifted his head slowly to gaze upon Maedhros’ ravaged body. No tears touched his cheeks, but their hollows sunk even deeper. Their knife-edged cut transformed Curufin’s face into the sharpness of a hawk’s. When was the last time he’d eaten?

Curufin groped for Maedhros’ left hand as one blind, fingers shaking, breaths speeding up as the heart will race in the grip of terror. His fingers closed over Maedhros’ hand, grip tight enough to grind the find bones in Maedhros’ hand together. Caranthir thought to intervene, but Curufin slipped from his chair onto his knees beside Maedhros’ prone and unmoving body. His breath shook as he lifted Maedhros’ hand to his lips and pressed a kiss into Maedhros’ knuckles. His grip transformed into the softness with which he had once cradled Curufinwë’s little hands in his.

“You must not blame them,” Curufin breathed into Maedhros’ skin, turning Maedhros’ hand palm-up and fitting the point of his chin and wane cheek within its lax cup in a parody of the way Maedhros used to hold their faces after Mother abandoned them, taking them into his wide, strong arms like their second father. “The crime is mine. Wholly mine. It was I who persuaded them to refuse Morgoth’s terms, not Maglor. It was I who spoke out against rescuing—” His voice fell apart in the air. His fevered gaze closed itself up behind squeezed eyelids, and he tucked his face deeper into Maedhros’ hand, breath shuddering like a rabbit cornered. “Forgive me. Please, Brother. I despaired. I believed you dead. I lost all hope, and I turned the others away from every path but those resigned to your fate.”

Caranthir’s jaw clenched unto pain, nails curled inwards to his palms, whole body held tight as a coiled wire against the _need_ to go to Curufin and comfort him. The pain in Curufin’s voice hurt him like an arm twisted to snapping point behind his back.

But Curufin did not stop. He had only just begun. “I know it is a crime unforgivable though. Father would have never—” His words failed as a keening noise climbed his throat. 

He stumbled on, voice turning ragged, deranged, while his body vibrated with the words as if he spoke with the passion he’d once known for life as he spoke of death. “I know my betrayal to be unforgivable. I know I deserve death and worse, for you suffered worse than death. I have considered my death, and will take my life if it is the payment you ask for my betrayal. I will make it a death properly violent. The punishment I have earned. And none of the others need to know you asked for it. I will leave no good-buys dripping self-pity, though I would ask you to entrust Curufinwë’s care to Celegorm. Let Celegorm be as a father to him, not for my sake, but my son’s. And then it will be over, a knife to the heart, your hand upon the blade if you seek that justice. Or I will toss myself off a cliff. Let there be nothing left of me but bones for the crows to peck the flesh off of. Or I will burn like Father—”

The horror had pinned Caranthir’s feet like a man pressed flat into the breast of the earth by the supremacy of hurricane winds. But Maedhros cut off the terrible words infecting the air as they had infected Curufin’s heart for years and years and years. 

Curufin’s eyes snapped open when Maedhros’ thumb brushed against his cheek. The movement was almost insignificant but that it was the first response Maedhros had given to the world around him since he’d passed into blackness from the agony of Fingon sawing through his flesh and bone with a knife worn dull from Fingon’s impotent hacking at the metal shackle forged under an Ainu’s hammer.

Maedhros’ eyes gazed upon Curufin with clearness, though they were not the eyes Caranthir remembered. Something had gone out of them, or fallen back behind a wall build with only Maedhros knew what horrors. They looked at Curufin with a sorrow that was for Curufin, but there was a distance to that sorrow, as if it had to struggle out from under a mountain of corpse-memories, but struggle free it did.

Maedhros fought to lift himself up to his elbow, teeth gritting, brow furrowing against the pain, but Curufin’s hands on his shoulders pushed him flat on the bed again. “Do not be a stubborn fool. You are not well enough to rise.” A briskness that strove to forge distance and re-build the façade of control wrapped itself in Curufin’s words. Once Maedhros was settled back in the bed, Curufin withdrew his touch, folding his hands neatly into his lap as he retreated to the solidarity chair. His eyes slid off Maedhros’ face.

“Come here,” Maedhros’ voice scratched his throat with its rawness. It would regain its luster and ring of proud command as Father’s once carried. The two of them were so alike in voice that when Caranthir heard them speak at his back he could not tell them apart.

Curufin twitched, gaze flickering to Maedhros’ face, finding the insistent gaze of silver eyes upon him, so much like Father’s eyes. He rose, hands locking behind his back, and took that single step to Maedhros’ bedside. Maedhros’ fingers curled into the bottom of Curufin’s tunic and tugged. “ _Come here_.”

Slowly, face struggling with composure, Curufin sank into the bed beside Maedhros. Maedhros’ hand rose to Curufin’s shoulder with difficultly. His fingers clenched in the muscle of Curufin’s shoulder and wrestled Curufin’s stiff form down into his arms. Maedhros held Curufin pinned against his chest as Curufin made a protesting noise and offered light resistance, but not daring more lest he damage Maedhros.

“Be still, and listen to me you great idiot,” Maedhros whispered roughly into Curufin’s ear. Curufin’s body stilled, but the tension did not release his muscles and his back and shoulders held themselves like wood beneath Maedhros’ touch. “That is the last time I ever want to hear talk of you killing yourself, or me assisting you with the deed!” His hand wound in Curufin’s hair tight enough to pull a small sound from Curufin’s throat when Maedhros shook Curufin’s head like he wanted to shaking the sense back into him. “You did exactly as I needed you to, and _relied_ on you to do in my absence. You kept them from a rash charge that would have brought their deaths down upon them! You did as I _wanted_ you to do.” 

Curufin’s body trembled, hands turning into fists on the sheets as if he drowned and they were his lifeline. “I left you die. I left you to die. I—”

“Yes,” Maedhros voice cut clean and chill as starlight. “And in so doing you kept them alive. Your ability to shut off emotion and chosen the lesser of two evils and _keep them safe_ was one of my greatest comforts in _hell_. Do not beg my forgiveness. I needed you to be exactly who you are. But I cursed your name many times in the dark.”

Curufin shuddered, body trying to unpeel from Maedhros’, recoil from the coldness in that voice. But Maedhros’ arm tightened and he turned his face into Curufin’s neck, breathing in the scent of him. “No,” he whispered. “Stay with me, dear one, my little brother. The world has grown so dark.”

Curufin lifted his head and gazed down into Maedhros’ face. Whatever he found there caused the tension to uncurl from his body, and he went slack and pliant in Maedhros’ arms. His body curled about Maedhros’ larger frame almost like a lover melting into the flesh of their bed partner.

“You cannot leave us. Not _you_ ,” Curufin whispered into Maedhros’ neck as Maedhros’ hand smoothed down the planes of Curufin’s back, sliding over the silky dark hair curtaining Curufin’s body like a second skin. “You do not know what it was like—what it was like…we _need_ you.”

Maedhros’ touch pressed more insistent into Curufin’s body, pulling him tighter, “I am here now, and I am not leaving. I am right here for you. Right here.”

Curufin made a desperate sound, face burrowing into Maedhros’ neck. Maedhros’ eyes rose to meet Caranthir’s and they shared the silent knowledge that it was Father Curufin was clinging to as much as his big brother. And no heroic rescue mission could bring Father back to them, not unless they traded the bodies of thousands, every Noldor breathing, and all the faces of their beloved brothers to pull down the power of Mandos and steal Father’s spirit back. He was gone, and they would not meet him again until death claimed them.

*

Caranthir shoved Curufin’s door open with an elbow, one arm balancing the plate of pumpkin bread, the other hand still holding the king of Belegost’s freshly arrived letter up at eye-level. He didn’t break off his pursuit of it as he helped himself to Curufin’s room. 

His brow darkened as Úri told of yet more of the displaced Firebeards departing their refuge in Belegost after Nogrod’s destruction by the murderous Sindar to flee East. And they did not go alone. Many of the Broadbeams of Belegost abandoned Beleriand, and the war with it, to seek false safety in the East. 

Caranthir stuffed the letter into the book he’d tucked under his arm, too furious to continue. He’d never taken the Khazâd for cowards, slim though their deeds in the war had been. They certainly could have turned out twice the number of soldiers Azaghâl brought to the Nirnaeth Arnoediad if they’d had a mind. But as grim as their retreat from Beleriand would be in regards to the war, it also put the Fëanorions in a perilous position. The Khazâd were their _only_ true ally left, and a depended upon trading partner.

He crossed the open space of Curufin’s receiving chamber in long strides that ate up the distance across the oak floor boards and brought him to the beautifully carved door leading to Curufin’s bedroom. He opened it without hesitation. Curufin was never in his rooms at this time of day, which was why Caranthir had picked it for his devilry time. He strode to Curufin’s desk that was piled with private projects, though few had seen work in years. 

He shifted through the contents of Curufin’s desk, by-passing all business, until he found a pleasure Curufin had buried under work. He pulled out Master Pennor’s compiled findings on his experiments with the steel and molybdenum alloy Celebrimbor had carried out of Gondolin, an alloy Maeglin had discovered. Caranthir quietly left Pennor’s work in the center of Curufin’s desk with the day’s sweet to tempt him into eating, as well as into releasing the heavy, grey burdens of their current diminished circumstances with. 

Some of the tension eased out of his shoulders when he saw Curufin’s neat, spidery handwriting inked into the margins of Pennor’s paper. Curufin may have picked at his dinner like a bird last night, swallowing only a few mouthfuls, and shadows may gather deep under eyes blazing with a cold, fractured fire, but he had found some release from his own mind for a time. And he’d eaten the apple crumble Caranthir had left for him yesterday. 

Caranthir’s mouth twitched in a rare, almost-smile as he picked up the old plate and replaced it with the three slices of tempting pumpkin bread he’d covered with a cloth. Curufin had practically licked the plate clean, not one crumb worth its name still lingered. Curufin always fell to Caranthir’s little gifts of sweets.

Not that Curufin knew the identity of his benefactor. He couldn’t have believed it was Celegorm; Celegorm would have told Curufin if he were taking time out of his days to make sure Curufin was eating. Celegorm’s own concerns over Curufin’s too hollow cheeks were made known at the dinner table where he piled Curufin’s plate high and shot Curufin many pointed looks, and words too, if the sons of Fëanor were in private. 

It was a relief to have at least one other brother not yet so sunk into himself that he could keep an eye out for their other brothers’ little needs, though Caranthir did not trust Celegorm’ eye to spot the needs and small comforts their brothers relied on as he did. Celegorm himself had only a few of these little things Caranthir kept an eye out for, but he noticed the longing in Celegorm’s eyes as he watched the puppies play in the kennels and the way Celegorm’s hands lingered long over brushing down his horse, treating the stallion with apples and handfuls of oats and whispering secrets into its velvet ears. Celegorm had been long enough grieving the betrayal of Huan. Caranthir determined to find his brother another canine companion.

Curufin probably thought Maglor left him the gifts. Before their eyes turned to Doriath and Maedhros’ messages to Dior were turned back without answer (and this after Maedhros had bowed his pride far too much in the wording of the ‘requests’ for the Silmaril’s return when Caranthir would have made it a _demand_!), Curufin’s assumption would not have been unlikely. But Caranthir had been keeping a watch on Maglor these last few months. Maglor was in no danger of harming himself, but with his spirit weighed down as it was, he had a habit of playing and singing long into the night when he should have been seeking what rest he could find.

When Caranthir wasn’t hustling into Maglor’s rooms and prying the harp out of his brother’s fingers, ignoring the furious protests, he was dragging Maglor down to the gardens under Curufin’s bedroom window and telling him if he was going to wear himself down to the bone he might as well make some use of himself. Maglor did not have to ask why he was there. Caranthir had found Maglor wandered down into the garden himself some nights to play and sing for Curufin. Caranthir lingered to listen at times to the gentle lullabies of their youth. He had no great talent in the musical arts, though Maglor had sweet-talked him into at least _trying_ his hand at this or that instruments, as he had all his brothers. But listening to Maglor play soothed his spirit and freed his mind. He still sought Maglor out at times when a particularly tangled problem or equation faced him. 

But for all his worry over Maglor’s sleeping habits, he feared for Maedhros more, but all of them did after Fingon’s death. Sweets and lullabies, no matter how beautiful, could not ease such pain. But Caranthir took what steps he could: the thicker coverlet of goose-feathers he’d left on Maedhros’ bed to ease the bite of winter’s chill as a warm body never would again, importing the finest bath salts and oils never-mind-the-cost brought Maedhros’ body, still the most susceptible to cold and aches and the slowest to heal even all the years after Angband, the greatest relief, and an evening spent rubbing them into Maedhros’ shoulders, back, thighs, calves, ignoring Maedhros’ every order not to bother with it. If Maedhros’ hadn’t secretly craved the relief a massage and the healing ointments gifted him, he would have thrown Caranthir and Maglor out instead of griping while they cornered him into a bath and anointed him.

Caranthir left Curufin’s chambers and returned to the room he’d commandeered for a work-space while staying in Maedhros’ Great Hall. The only good thing to come out of the murdering coward Dior’s continued theft of the Silmaril was that it had brought all his brothers back under one roof. A quiet contentment stirred in the secret depths of his heart to have them all together again. But the joy did not transcend into happiness, for too much was lost. 

Caranthir dropped into the chair before his desk. His hand went to the top-right drawer and drew out the box within. Their father’s crest was worked into the lid, and the ivory was still as fresh a white as when Curufin had first crafted this one of seven. The rich, exotic ebony wood the Khazâd caravans carried up from the South made up the box’s foundation. Mithril braces clasped its corners and formed the tongue of its seal, while swirls of ivory danced across the coffee-black wood in a contrast of color that delighted the eye.

He rested his hand on the lid, thumb pressing into the tongue of Mithril holding it sealed. He did not need to speak a secret word of Power for the seal to yield to him as a box crafted for private matters by a lesser-hand would have required. Curufin’s craftsmanship knew him by touch, and would open to any son of Fëanor. 

They had agreed, when Curufin laid the plans down before them shortly after Maedhros’ rescue when it seemed they were hemmed in on all sides by enemies and now forced to bend their knee to the Usurper Fingolfin, that they would not allow the fear of betrayal to ever come between them. There would be no secret they kept back from their brothers, lest only if it be a secret of the heart. Their hands had clasped as they swore their own, private oath to never betray a brother. 

The oath seemed an insultingly unwarranted paranoia at the time, but Maedhros and Curufin urged for it. Caranthir admitted, if grudgingly, that knowing, without the shadow of a doubt, that Maedhros would never choose Fingon over them, or the twins, though their eyes strayed East, would never abandoned them, or Curufin, no matter how far into madness he fell, would never make some crazed, cold-blood deal that would put one of Father’s jewels back into his hands for the price of a brother, did silence every doubt Caranthir’s heart could conjure in these fallen years. 

He hated their oath as he hated the Oath though. He trusted his brothers, absolutely, never mind a moment’s shadow over his heart, and they trusted him. They did not need oaths to remain true to each other into death and beyond.

He drew his half-written letter to Curufinwë from the box. He scanned over the page of news he’d written, nothing that could hurt the sons of Fëanor should the letter fall into another’s hands during the long journey to the Havens of Sirion, and nothing at all about Curufin who Caranthir never mentioned until the last line of every letter where he urged Curufinwë to come home and told him the truth: Your father misses you.

Whether Curufinwë had read even a single of the letters Caranthir sent him every month or tossed them straight into the fire, Caranthir did not know as Curufinwë had never written back. But neither had Curufinwë written him a scathing demand to cease contacting him and ended the letter with a brutal signature of ‘Celebrimbor, son of none.’ Curufinwë hadn’t come home either though.

Caranthir pressed his anger down into a tight ball of fire stewing in his gut. Curufinwë’s continued absence tormented Curufin, and Caranthir’s patience with his nephew’s pride and stubbornness wore thin. Curufinwë’s reasons for denouncing his family rang thin to Caranthir’s ears. But Curufinwë belonged here, with them, so he sat down and scraped the exec ink from the quill’s nub back into ink pot and continued yet another letter that fell upon deaf ears. 

Once the business with Dior was dealt with, Caranthir had a mind to ride to the Havens himself and bring his wayward nephew back home, fighting the whole way if he could not knock some sense into Curufinwë. Maedhros would take care of that, and Celegorm too, once Caranthir had brought Curufinwë back. And Curufin’s own pride would shatter before he stood tall and unyielding and watched his son leave him for a second time. 

Caranthir’s gaze snapped up as the door opened without invitation. Curufin walked in with that gliding stride of his that carried him through the room with the fluidity of water and the haughtiness of a panther.

Surprise held Caranthir suspended for one long moment of staring in which the afternoon’s sunlight meshed like strings of jewels in the thick luster of Curufin’s ink-black hair, before he hastily shoved the half-finished letter under a pile of parchments at his elbow. It wasn’t that he had kept his writings to Curufinwë a secret from Curufin, or any of his brothers, only that they never spoke of it. 

When the caravan of wandering traders had come out of West Beleriand with their wears as well as news and messages after Caranthir wrote his first letter, Curufin sought him out. Caranthir’s throat tightened at the memory of the desperate hope in Curufin’s eyes he’d tried so hard to layer over with ice when he asked if Curufinwë had written back. They never spoke of the letters again after that bitter disappointment.

“It must be some great matter indeed that brought you to my door,” Caranthir said. Curufin rarely visited him. What friendship, even the fragile one, they had once shared had long melted away under the burn of madness. Caranthir loved Curufin, and always would, but the man Curufin had once been had all but disappeared. 

Curufin shocked him by smiling, not the wildly joyous grin of their youths, that smile unfettered by any shadow, but a small slice of white teeth. It was more than Curufin was accustomed to bestowing on him. 

Curufin’s body curved around Caranthir’s desk like a cat’s, and bewildered Caranthir all over again when Curufin slid himself onto the desk’s face, perching there like some fey, sinful creature that roused the blood in Caranthir’s loins with a single glance. “There is something I wanted to discuss with you, yes.” Curufin picked up a crystal sphere Caranthir used as a paper-weight as much as a delight to his eye for the way it bent the sunlight and shone diamond-bright.

Curufin turned the sphere over in his palms, his shrewd gaze measuring Caranthir’s face. Caranthir stared back, helpless, trapped in the elegant curve of Curufin’s jaw and the way his fingers ached to trace the perfectly balanced line of Curufin’s dark brows and take the expanse of Curufin’s cheeks into his palms.

Curufin watched him through sly, calculating eyes. “Do you remember what Father used to say about the Silmarils’ power?” 

“He said many things,” Caranthir dismissed, grasping for distance while he spun inside Curufin’s eyes, their shape, the long, thick curl of their lashes, the grey of their irises like morning mist, brilliant enough to set the world aflame.

“But do you remember what he said about the Valar being as afraid of the Light within the Silmarils as they were covetous?” Curufin urged, before slipping a bridle over the growing fervency of his words, pulling back, cooling, curling Caranthir that slice of smile again that now sank in Caranthir’s belly like a ship wreck. Because he recognized it. Recognized _this_. 

“The Silmarils have an untapped power,” Curufin carried on in a slick, persuasive voice. The one he used when he wanted something. “Father’s study of them had not reached the boundaries of their limitations, and even with that we know their Light could have supported a kingdom in lands void of all but starlight. Crops would have grown, bodies would have strengthened as with the Light of the Trees, endurance, healing, spiritual health, Orcs burning up under the holy Light for the Silmarils are the antithesis of evil.” Curufin paused for breath, but though his eyes glowed with that fierce, unquenchable light that threw Caranthir back to the months when Father’s death was a fresh, open wound in their souls, Curufin still spoke like a snake charmer.

Caranthir’s hands curled into fists. Curufin’s gaze flickered down to them. He left off his play with the sphere and learned forward, palm splaying on the desk. The ring Father made for him long ago for his Coming of Age glittered on his finger. The diamond cut into an eight-point star, the end of its arms sharp enough to sink into flesh. It declared Curufin’s eternal allegiance.

“Do you not see?” Curufin pressed. “If we had the Silmaril in our possession again, not only would the wounds in our people’s spirits be healed and our vigor restored as if with re-birth, but the way to Valinor and the Halls of Mandos where the Valar hold Father imprisoned would be unmasked under the Silmaril’s Light!” 

Curufin’s hand dared to cross the distance to Caranthir’s shoulder not in a brother’s touch, or even a friend’s, but in a calculated gesture to forge an intimacy of allies between them that would be nothing but smoke in the mouth because Curufin had come here to secure Caranthir’s vote in the sons of Fëanor’s councils over what to do about Dior now the cowardly _boy_ playing at justice had turned away Maedhros’ second messenger without a reply. Curufin had come to use Caranthir like a pawn in his eternal fight to reclaim what Father had sworn them to in a fit of madness.

The fury washed out reason, toppled the tenderness of a thousand quiet gestures of love, the kind of profound, enduring affection that had set his feet upon the path to his brother’s room day after day with a sweet in hand in the hope that the sweetness would fill in the hollows of Curufin’s cheeks and round the sharpness of proud shoulders to curve soft, healthy flesh over their knife-blade sharpness. All that was forgotten as Caranthir’s temper ambushed him, shouting out its protest that he was not one of Curufin’s councilors or opponents. He was Curufin’s _brother_. Games and manipulations and sly words had no place between them!

He shoved his chair back and stood, anger wrapping about his chest. The hurt that Curufin would come to him like this, like a stranger, curled into a small, wounded ball beneath. “Tell me. Did you whore yourself out like this in Nargothrond? Your friendship bought for a palm-full of power? Is this the real reason you were cast out? Even the soft-palmed lords of the South couldn’t stomach your false-smiles and snake-words.”

Curufin unfolded from the desk, silver-quick, like a striking viper, rising to his full height with cold, lethal pride. His mouth turned cruel and twisting. Caranthir had dreamed a hundred dreams where that mouth melted into tenderness under his. He would gather Curufin’s face up in his hands and drink of his brother’s nectar for the very first time, and it would be sweet as ichor. 

But this was no dream, and Curufin’s mouth had grown accustomed to thrones, forgetting the taste of roses. Caranthir had no one to blame but himself, but it crippled him all the same. “Well you would know. Are not snake-mouthed men who sell themselves with pretty words your area of expertise? Did Ulfang get on his knees for your pleasure? He must have. How else were you so _stupidly_ blind to trust him if he were not your whore?”

Caranthir surged forward with a roar, seizing Curufin’s shoulders in rough hands and shaking him. “Shut up!” 

He shoved Curufin, hard. The momentum carried them to the wall, and Caranthir slammed Curufin’s slighter body up against it. Red blotted out his vision, the rage so thick his blood curdled with it, and screaming below that the terrible guilt that smote him the moment the first Easterlings’ blade sliced through one of his soldier’s backs and he realized they had been betrayed by the allies _he_ had courted to their cause. (Why hadn’t he seen? How could he have failed his brothers so utterly?)

Caranthir pinned Curufin, forearm pressing into his windpipe. Curufin’s hands flew up, fingers digging into the flesh of Caranthir’s arm, but he did not struggle. “Don’t you dare talk about that! Don’t you dare!” Spittle flew from his snarling mouth and speckled Curufin’s face.

Curufin’s eyes glinted with something toxic. “Do it,” his voice was soft as darkness as he goaded, mouth quivering between a curled lip and a trembling line. “You know you want to. Wrap your hands about my neck and _squeeze_. If I disgust you so much then _kill me_ and make an end to it!” The rage fled like fallen leaves before the hurricane of horror plowing into Caranthir. 

He recoiled. Curufin slipped from his hands like wet blood to slump against the wall. His face looked broken, like porcelain crushed under a hammer blow. 

Their breathing swelled the silence, harsh and heavy, but Curufin’s throat had not been damaged. That knowledge brought Caranthir only a paltry relief. He would never have seriously injured Curufin, no matter the might of his rage, but Curufin’s death-courting words chased through his mind like a pack of wolves on the hunt.

Curufin straightened, pulling back his spine and shifting his face into the familiar lines of haughtier. His lip curled back with disgust. “Too much of a coward, then?” 

But the taunt had no power to sharpen Caranthir’s temper into another spear-head. “I do not want to hurt you. You are my brother. You are my…Curufin.” He spoke Curufin’s name softly, delicately, like the jewel it was.

Curufin pressed back against the wall, as if Caranthir came at him with a blade. His face lost its grip on the sheer, ice walls thrown up to keep everyone out, and betrayed bewilderment, open as a child’s.

Caranthir swallowed and closed the step between them, hands lifting, shaking. He was a fucking moron. He reached anyway. This didn’t mean anything, he lashed out at himself, Curufin couldn’t even accept kindness now. He kept reaching. He took the dainty curves of Curufin’s ears under his fingertips. Curufin’s mouth parted with a gasp at the touch, and Caranthir followed the shape of Curufin’s ears down to the simple, yet elegant, sparkling black gems dangling from their lobes. 

Curufin hissed, voice sharp with fear, or confusion, or something else: “What are you doing?”

Not enough. He was not doing enough, had never done enough. He should have told Curufin. He should have told him long long ago in Valinor when they were young and wild and free of any chains upon their souls. He should have told him he was in love with him and would never fall out of love with him because when he said ‘I will love you forever’ he didn’t mean only until the road grew jagged and Curufin become someone else, someone cruel and knife-edged, he meant forever forever.

It was too late for words of love to fix anything. Love couldn’t snap the chains of an Oath eating Curufin up from the inside out. Love couldn’t bring Father back from the dead or return Curufinwë to his father’s arms. Caranthir’s love could not heal Curufin.

But.

The words trembled like a virgin’s thighs on his tongue. But what if they had the power to ease even a sliver of the anguish?

His hands fell from Curufin’s face to rest against the base of Curufin’s throat, mouth parched and burning as a dessert around the confession. Say it. _Say it_. The beat of Curufin’s heart pulsed under his thumbs, and the heels of his palms brushed against the coolness of the seed-pearls sown into the delicate shape of a vine along Curufin’s high collar.

“You are my brother,” his voice croaked out between the words quivering on his tongue that he had hoarded inside for an Age. “And I would wish myself dead before I dreamt a single hair on your head being harmed. Because I…I…I l-love…I love you.”

Bull-brained, thick-tongued, idiot! ‘I-I-I l-l-love you.’ Sounding like some half-witted beast! He needed to explain, needed to confess the fullness of the love inside him, needed to—

Curufin’s eyes ignited like a torch tossed into a vat of oil. His hands snapped up to cage Caranthir’s wrists and throw them off him. He drove Caranthir back with a punch of his palms into Caranthir’s shoulders. Caranthir fell back a step as Curufin’s head came up, pride singing in the air about him like a cold, ruthless melody. 

“You have some _nerve_ ,” Curufin twisted the word like the snarling roots of a tree. “To pick up _brotherly kindness_ after _centuries_ of insults! Well,” he smoothed one pale, elegant-boned hand down the front of his tunic, picking Caranthir apart under a gaze unmerciful as a blizzard. “Play the _big brother_ on your own time. Any tender feelings I had towards you died long ago.” He spun with a snap of heel and strode from the room, shoulders an untouchable fortress against Caranthir.

Five hundred years and more he’d lived with a broken-bone of a heart. Its ache an old enemy. But this hand plunged into his chest to wrap about the abused organ and _twist_ , this anguish of ‘Any tender feelings I had towards you died long ago’ with self-affliction at its core, struck him like a blow to the face. His hand groped for the wall, seeking it like an embrace. It hurt, but he had no one to blame for that but himself.

It was too late. He’d known it was too late to reach Curufin, but his fool’s hope (or maybe it was pure selfish desire) had him tricked into believing, for just one moment of weakness, that he could reach for the sun. It had only ever been a dream, a fantasy lived out behind his eyelids. Reality greeted him with a brutal kiss, harsh as a stone lover’s lips. Wake up now fool! Wake up and greet the life of grayness and broken-bone heart in his chest. This was all he had left now. So swallow the heartbreak his own hands had plowed long ago. No use weeping over the mistakes of a youth long passed changing.


	5. Chapter 5

The Secret Language Brother  
Chapter 5

It was a cold comfort that the last words Caranthir shared with Curufin were not ones born from the spear pit he carried in his mouth. 

It was the night before they breached the doors of Menegroth and slew their way to the boy-king that thought himself master of a Silmaril. Caranthir had survived the months since Curufin cut him from his heart, no, since Curufin had thrown in his face that he’d been cut from his brother’s heart long, long ago. He’d survived because more than ruin and sorrow remained. Loyalty like horizons carried him on through each day, loyalty and love to brothers, not dream-lovers. 

Curufin came to him during the watches of the night, neither of them finding rest on the eve of battle. Curufin’s eyes burned like the restless, destructive molten core of a volcano, and still, _still_ Caranthir’s eyes dropped to Curufin’s mouth and he thought of what it would be like to kiss it, imagining how Curufin’s mouth would be supple and rich with heat, a bed of velvet he drowned inside.

But the words Curufin spoke with the fever of Father’s in Tirion’s Great Square drove all thoughts of lust from Caranthir. “I dreamed last night.” 

Curufin did not have to say it was a dream of foresight, those were the only dreams Curufin ever shared. Caranthir remembered a time when Curufin used to share even his dreams with him, but that was before the foresight awoke in Curufin, back before the Valar Cursed them, or maybe it was the moment Curufin lost his innocence and stained white beaches with blood, Caranthir did not know for Curufin had long since stopped coming to him with his dreams. Father would know; he’d been the only one Curufin would trust with them when the _Gift_ had first awoken in him. 

“What did you dream?” For once Caranthir’s voice was soft as it turned on Curufin like the gentle coaxing of a wild animal into eating from his palm. He had to suppress the pathetic press of tears in the backs of his eyes that Curufin had come to _him_ with this. That he had chosen Caranthir above all others to confide in.

Curufin’s eyes looked right through him, terribly bright, but unseeing, as if he looked into a dream-world. “Celegorm died. Dior killed him.” 

A strangled sound, something like a repressed sob or a grunt from a blow to the gut, reached into all the deep shadows of the tent, and it took Caranthir a moment to realize it had come from his own throat.

Curufin’s eyes focused on him for the first time since he’d ducked into the tent and roused Caranthir from his tossing upon the cot where he could not find rest. Curufin stared into his face, and Caranthir stared back, not trying to secret away the horror. “Yes,” Curufin said slowly, a strange smile fleeting over his mouth like a cloud passing over the sun. “I dreamed Maedhros died in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad the night before the battle.” Caranthir sucked in a breath. He had never known this. Curufin confided nothing in him now. “I told Maglor of it, and together we guarded Maedhros through the battle, slew the traitor who would have stabbed Maedhros through the back, and defied fate. Do you see, now?” Curufin’s eyes shone with a fanatic’s fire in the light of the single lit candle flame. “Fate and Valar’s Curses can be defied if one only has the will. Tomorrow all of, together, will see Celegorm through the battle, safeguarding him onto its other side.”

Curufin spoke with the kind of determination that had driven Father in those last months of life, the kind that had passed beyond the concept of failure because failure was _not an option_. Curufin’s burning walked the edge of a _hröa’s_ resilience, just as Father’s had before the end. 

Curufin could tip over that edge and Caranthir would be able to do nothing but hold his body as it burned up from the fire of his _fëa_ , just like Curufin had held Father’s and screamed and screamed, falling into curses and babbled madness until Maglor Sung sleep into his mind.   
Caranthir had never doubted the anguish in Curufin’s voice had been born from his heart tearing out rather than the way Father’s burning body had charred the flesh on Curufin’s hands, forearms, and chest from where he’d cradle Father to him. 

It felt like a blade slid cold, so cold, between Caranthir’s ribs to pierce his heart. Curufin was going to die. Maybe not tomorrow or the next day or even month, but he was dying a little more each day that passed and he slipped deeper into the madness. Caranthir had a moment of terror so all encompassing that when he pressed his hand into his chest it surprised him to find his heart still beating. 

And then, without conscious thought, he had Curufin in his arms, and he thought, if Curufin’s body turned to flame like Father’s had, he wouldn’t let go. He’d hold on, skin crisping, and curse all the Powers in the world and swear his revenge unto World’s Ending. 

Curufin did not fight him like a cornered wild animal. He stood there in the circle of Caranthir’s embrace that felt like Curufin was his life-line in a world going up in flames, body stiff, as if he’d forgotten what an embrace felt like or how it was meant to work. 

Caranthir swore into Curufin’s ear that they would save Celegorm, or course they would, there had never been any doubt, there could not be, and in his heart he swore also that he would save Curufin from himself. Somehow, someway, he would save him. This could not be the end. 

Curufin shook Caranthir off him after another moment of standing there like a statue made of stone, or a machine that had forgotten what it was to be human. He gave Caranthir a long, confused look after he’d put distance between them. At least it was not a blank stare, anything but that. Then he turned on his heel and made for the tent entrance. 

Caranthir could not let this moment that was like a diamond among a mountain of coal end like this. For all his voiced and silence vows, he could not pretend they were not going into battle with the dawn where one of them might fall. If their Oath lay unfulfilled, their soul ripped form _hröa_ would be chained in the Everlasting Dark until World’s Ending. 

“Brother,” he called, and Curufin halted, hand on the tent flap, but did not turn around. Oh that beloved back with its strong shoulders and gentle dip at spine’s ending, that glossy fall of hair dark as ink-spill, and long legs with their shapely calves. “Do not forget to guard yourself as well tomorrow.” _I love you._ But he did not speak the words for fear that Curufin would turn in a flash, teeth bared on a snarl, and the last words they shared be ones of cruelty.

Curufin held very still for a moment, fingers clenching into a fist about the tent’s tarp, before he finished throwing it back and returning to the star-dusted night. He had not looked back or said a word of parting. Caranthir told himself he did not deserve one, but could not stop the way his stomach seemed to go on and on without end, his insides as empty as a desert streambed.

*

Caranthir lay dying, a knife in the back. What a pathetic way to die. What a wasted life. What a deserving death. 

Then he heard it: Curufin’s cry. 

He struggled against the death pressing like an enemy’s heel into his lungs. He had to get up; his brother was calling him. Curufin needed him. 

He’d tear the face off the one who dared to touch his brother. He’d rip open their chest with his bare hands. He’d use their weedy little bows to stab a hole in their necks. He’d use their pitiful excuse for metal-work to slice off any hand that dared harm Curufin. 

He had to get to get up… _get the fuck up_ … His head flopped back against the stones. They weren’t mossy cushions; there was no water-slicked, bewitching youth bending over him with a smile he’d not seen in so so long. Curufin who he lovedovedlovedloved. 

His lungs collapsed. He suffocated to death, brain exploding in a kaleidoscope of agony and despair. 

He’d listened to the sound of a _fëa_ tearing free of its _hröa_ often enough to banish all illusion that death was a peaceful experience for one of the Firstborn. To tear spirit from body was an act of violence deeper than the physical death of the _hröa_. They weren’t like Mortals; they weren’t created to die. 

Caranthir’s soul tore out of his body, and it was an agony so acute it would have knocked him unconscious had he still had the power to blackout. It was enough to leave him wishing he’d been born a Mortal, if only for the space of time that tearing lasted. 

A noose tried to slip itself about his neck. He supposed it would have been an inevitable surrender if he didn’t have a call far more vital than Mandos’ to answer. Somewhere in this shit-hole Curufin needed him. 

He stood, or imagined himself standing if he still had a body. Everything but his one point of purpose slid about in his head, and he couldn’t get the world to slow down enough for the colors to stop spinning. There were hands; cold, wrathful, raking through parts of him too intimate to be shown even to his brothers, and certainly not to the looming presence seeking to reel him in. He wasn’t answering anyone’s call but Curufin’s.

The world looked too black, too white, too red, too everything. He had the sensation of putting one step in front of the other, only he didn’t have feet. He knew, if he turned back to look, he would see his body left behind on the floor. It was a terrifying thought, but one that didn’t cow him. He’d long passed over any fear for his own life. 

He stumbled his way through a battle of pitch blackness and blinding light. Warring Powers pressed against him as he struggled to push forward, like a man trying to wade through a swamp. They weren’t just colors, they were opponents in a battle, and he was the prize between them. Maybe Dark and Light weren’t the right names for the two ancient Powers, but he knew none better. All he comprehended was the terrible whiteness in the coldness hounding him, and the seductive whisper of the whiteness’ opposite, a circling whirlpool of voices: come to us, join us and be one, all sorrow stripped away, all pain forgotten. Come to us, child of fire. 

He surrendered neither to the Light nor the Dark.

He broke the surface. His _fëa_ shivered in the struggle of resistance. He came out of the maze of Light and Dark and into a hall of bodies oozing blood on a floor of stones polished smooth as forged steel, as only Khazâd stonemasonry could have achieved in this land of forest-dancers who spat upon the Noldor’s peerless craftsmanship as their long sundered, sea-loving kin had once delighted in the works of Fëanor’s hands in their swan city.

Maglor knelt on the floor, his already filthy leggings soaking up more blood from the pool slowly expanding around him. Celegorm lay just to the side, one hand wrapped about the sword through his chest, the other reaching for a hand just a few inches too far away. It was the hand of the body propped up against Maglor’s chest and punched full of arrows. It was Curufin. 

Caranthir’s quest to save his little brother shattered on a floor of steel-bright stones. He was at Curufin’s side without conscious thought. Distantly he supposed he didn’t have to follow the laws of nature now.

“Curufin. Brother.” Maglor called, but the face he cradled in his hands was leached of all color. Maglor’s fingers pressed rough and bloodied against the pulse-point in Curufin’s neck. “No. _Damn you_.”

Amrod broke into the room. A cry scrapped its way up his throat like a knife’s edge. He collapsed close enough to Caranthir he could almost feel the heat of Amrod’s skin where it melted into Caranthir’s bodiless _fëa_. Amrod’s mouth, the one that had always been so quiet, so slow to speak, sealed now, tight as a chain of mithril. His gaze locked, transfixed, on the place Celegorm’s fingers stopped just short of Curufin’s.

Then Amras was there, and questions fired into the stillness. “Do you have a pulse? Amrod, can you help me get these arrows out of him? Has anyone seen Maedhros or Caranthir?” And the last, pulled up like a tooth from its socked because even now, even kneeling in the blood of their brothers, the sons of Fëanor were not free, would never be free: “The Silmaril?”

Eyes darted over faces, cast away, down, at the brothers lying dead, so ashamed that the question had been asked at a time like _this_ , but all of them knowing if Amras hadn’t they would have.

Caranthir shouldn’t care what the answer to that last question was. He should be screaming at them to tell him if Curufin still lived, to _help_ him, not sit about discussing Father’s fucking jewel. But he couldn’t stop the need-hate craving in his chest to hear the words: we have it. He was bound in death and beyond. Nothing would free him from its chains.

But the words of triumph, of the end of their exhausting, hateful existence bound up in the possession of the Silmarils did not come. None of his brothers could ease the tightness of the chains about their necks.

“Curufin?” Amras asked again.

Maglor’s fingers fell like devastation from Curufin’s neck, and the voice he spoke in was raw as bone grating in a hollow socket. “Gone.”

Dead. That heart stilled for eternity. It would never again beat its fist against Caranthir’s chest as it once had, a lifetime ago in another world. 

Cold fingers pressed into his sides, trying to draw him back against a prison cell of retribution. And at his feet spread an abyss of forgetfulness. He could wrench himself out of Mandos’ embrace and fall into the Power the simple-minded, battle-pissing Wood-elves worshiped.

He rebelled against the thought of either choice and yanked himself by pure stubbornness out of Mandos’ claws. The hold was weak; he’d already resisted the worst of it in the immediate aftermath of his death. 

So this was it then? This shadow-life? Words his father spoke all those years ago with the torchlight smoking in the Great Square came back to him. He had never felt so alive as in that moment when Father called them to vengeance and freedom. Would his existence now be nothing but a mist-haunting one? 

Maedhros entered the hall. He took in the sight of his two dead brothers and reported Caranthir’s own death in a monotone. There were no tears choking his voice or reddening his eyes. There were no hysterical wails, no rages complete with furniture throw against walls. There was emptiness in Maedhros’ face, as if he’d walked so far passed the borders of grief he’d come to a place of barren rock and a sky churning with the black hunger of the Void, biding its time before consumption.

When Maedhros received word of the twin sons of Dior’s abandonment in the woods, he strode out of the hall, left Maglor and the twins to finish arranging their brothers’ bodies for the pyres, and called for his horse. Caranthir followed him. He followed Maedhros through his days of searching without sleep or break for nourishment, and then he followed him back again to watch their bodies go up in flame. He followed Maglor when he slipped away to weep alone, and sing a lament in their memory that carried all the destruction of a hurricane and all the haunting sorrow of the sea. He followed the twins when they curled around each other, still smelling of burnt bodies, to stare at the blackness of night until the sun’s rising.

When the Fëanorions broke camp and returned to Ossiriand, Caranthir followed them. Mandos’ call dwindled to an annoyance and the abyss of the Land’s promised forgetfulness had snapped shut, leaving him to his chosen fate. Perhaps he had become everything his father’s words had dripped contempt for in Valinor, but he preferred a mist-haunting existence following what was left of the living to one bound in the cold chains of Mandos for eternity.


End file.
